Florin Cojocaru, the BLACK CUBE lawyer: I like complex cases!

Only two of his clients were found guilty sentenced to jail in 14 years of working as a lawyer.

In April 2016, two Israeli citizens were arrested in Bucharest for espionage against Laura Codruța Kovesi. The scandal risked compromising even the diplomatic relations between two countries. A team of lawyers embarked on the first El-Al flight from Tel Aviv and for a few days took a tour of the famous Romanian law firms to determine who will defend the two. They chose FLORIN COJOCARU, a rather unknown figure at the time. Why? We will try to discover the answer in the interview he graciously agreed to give to Q Magazine.

LEARN FROM EVERYTHING

If you could describe yourself in a few words, what would those be?

The π without which the area of a circle cannot be calculated.

But in more words?

Florin Cojocaru. Lawyer.

You once told me that a special moment during your years as a student of the Faculty of Law was a course with Professor Viorel Roș. Would you like to share it?

I was about 20 years old. Mr. Viorel Roș made an appearance for the first time at that class and, from closing the classroom door and until he sat down in his chair I understood that I was dealing with somebody special. So striking was the mere presence of (at that time) the judge.

At one point he read us the poem “Learn from everything.” If we hadn’t already had a crash course in criminal law, we would never have let him go. But the sublime thing is that, in fact, Mr. Viorel Roș would never leave…

After the course, I stopped him and asked him to help me with the poem. I didn’t have internet, I didn’t have Google at that time. He did it with nobility, and I was left with the joy of an one on one “relationship” with the man who impressed me and who was returning to preside over the Bucharest Court. I think that afterwards, for about one week, I couldn’t concentrate and thought of nothing else, I just read the poem and wondered at the experience this meeting represented.

What could be more beautiful!? “[…] Learn from the shadow to keep quiet and watch, / Learn from the rock to firmly believe, / […] / Learn from everything as they are related, / How to live your life beautifully, how to die gracefully, / […] / Learn from the eagles when your shoulders are burdened, / And go to the ant to see its burden.” For a young man, who just went through adolescence, it was a blessing of Destiny.

You remembered it!

How did you decide to become a criminal investigation officer?

This question reminds me of the suggestive title of the book written by the monk Nicolae Steinhardt “Through others to myself.” That’s how it was for me – my path was determined by people “sent” in my life of Providence. And they keep coming… Nothing without God!

I finished the “Sfântul Sava” National College – back then “Nicolae Bălcescu High School” because a girl I liked in secondary school, one year older than me, went there before me. I ended up at the Police Academy, because, being in the 12^th grade, after all the years of science specialization at the “Sfântul Sava,” I met a young man, a friend and former high school colleague of my brother, who finished the Academy. I was impressed enough to reconsider my option to go for the Polytechnic university, helping me find, in fact, my true nature.

My father was the embodiment of honesty, honour, dignity, and stayed this way until his last day… I wish I were like him. He liked to be fair and for justice to be served. But I kept studying, in particular, through the care and input of my brother. My mother took me by the hand to put together my admission file. Anyway, this is how I became a student at the Police Academy, in 1994. I met people from the field of criminal investigation, with one of whom I have a 20 year friendship. I chose the criminal law field from the time I studied, and at graduation I kept the same option.

And how did you become a lawyer later?

I loved my work in the police force and I will always be grateful for the professional foundation that it, and also the Police Academy, in fact the Romanian Police in general, have built in me.

I did my best, I pulled off outstanding professional achievements while constantly dealing with extreme austerity, with achievements that, sometimes, even Houdini would not have been able to pull off. I had all the fulfilment and recognition I was looking for in terms of the results of my work. I was honest and I was helping justice. But I found myself window shopping too many times while holding hands with my wife and carrying the baby on my shoulders.

I had education: both post-university – and criminal and civil law, I had a master’s degree in National Security and Defense, I had translated studies in the field of international relations, I had not received a minute of private lessons in my whole life, so intellectually I had evolved. I considered buying one dress a year a victory. It seemed unfair to me at one point. But I realized that it would be bad for me to let myself become frustrated… And I told myself that if I deserve more, I should try.

And… Have you tried?!

Yes! I gathered everything I done in a CV and, based on this background, I was recruited as a lawyer by a multinational company.

By HBO!

Yes. By the way, after five years, I left the Bucharest Police where, as a criminal investigation officer, I had a monthly salary equivalent to 225 USD. When I went to the four interviews for the position at the above mentioned company, I sincerely marvelled every time at the elevator I was using, with all its lights and mirrors. It also had some nice digital buttons too!

It was a completely different world!

Yes, completely different. I got the job. After a few years, I felt the need for a more rigorous evaluation and chose to try, more out of curiosity, the exam at the Bar. I wanted to know, especially in the field of criminal law, how prepared I was. After all, it was still my first love! At that time it was a written exam. I took the exam, and, most importantly (!), I passed it with a clean 10 (A+) when it came to criminal law. I wrote, if I remember correctly, about 21 pages. This caused me a delight that I could not hide. Company representatives told me that I could open my own lawyer’s office, and that the multinational company would be my first client. That’s how I started my law firm.

Looking back, how were these 14 years as a lawyer like?

I added them to all the years of schooling. My job a a lawyer, I must admit, in my case, is a continuation of the school, for which I am grateful! This court exercise is a chance and a benefit that deserves all the recognition.

We all learn from judges: we, the lawyers, the legal counselors, and prosecutors. Even when the judges get it wrong, we still learn. And it is subsidized education!

On the other hand, it is not easy to be constantly evaluated by everyone: your own clients, adversaries, other professionals, lawyers, prosecutors and, most importantly, judges. It is an endless school.

HOW THE ISRAELIS CHOSE HIM

Can we say that the Judiciary serves Justice?

This is its first mission. I can say yes! With all the experience, not always pleasant, brought by the search for and finding of Justice. For those who cannot say it: they must believe. If they don’t believe it, they have to end up believing. That’s the hope we need. Abandoning hope should not be among the options, otherwise you will go crazy.

As a last resort we must have the comfort that, if Justice ever happens to not be served by the Judiciary, it will never escape God. Everything is a test!

If you were the defendant, would you defend yourself or choose another lawyer? Who?

It would definitely be part of the defense team. Otherwise, for the purpose of your question, I really like Attorney Marian Nazat.

We all know you as the Black Cube Lawyer! How come the Israeli company chose you?

They sent to Bucharest with this mission a man who sees right through other people. I understood this ability of his when we first met and looked at each other. It was the end of a few days in which, from London to Romania, the man had done nothing but meet other lawyers. He is the Black Cube lawyer in Israel and around the world, a very unique character.

Is it that one case with spies?

It is one with professionals. Full of professionals. Even the unrelated ones, the ones not seen are skilled professionals.

It has been several years since the casefile was put together and nothing is happening. I am not asking for details, I just want to understand: why a case which seemed open-and-shut is not yet in court? I know that one of the people involved, Colonel Daniel Dragomir, even made numerous requests to speed up the process and reach a verdict: either to dismiss the casefile or send it to court. What is the meaning of the years that have elapsed since the beginning of a criminal investigation?

The professionals I mentioned included, first and foremost, the DIICOT prosecutors, who do not have an easy mission, and they understood this from the very beginning. At the stage of belief, in this sense, they arrived only a little later. We lawyers would like to be able to manage a case in all its terms, including its duration, but this remains the prosecutor’s attribute. The case prosecutor is, in this case, a very (!) good one, as is the whole team he works with. It is only a false impression that nothing happens. “Justice is like food. You have to cook it slowly” the above-mentioned lawyer told me. The prosecutors remain unwavering, they seek the truth.

CHIEFS OF THE MOSSAD IN CHARGE

We also know you as Elan Schwartzenberg ’s lawyer. Do you have a fondness for Jewish clients? Or do they have a fondness for you?

Given you mentioned Elan Schwartzenberg, I will instinctively answer that I have a fondness for justice. I say it, in this case, without any reservation. I am very happy that he has regained some of his freedoms. There are indeed other Jews, facing difficulties, who chose me. But my fondness is for complex people and complex cases.

ALONE ON A FIELD

A few days ago I was reading about the case of a lawyer from Dâmboviţa, who left the Prosecutor’s Office after 20 hours of hearings and, due to his fatigue, he had a car accident. Did you happen to have marathon hearings? Is this a normal procedure?

Yes I know! It’s tragic. I am very sorry for what happened to that colleague. There are indeed marathon hearings. They are not a common, but they happen as exceptional situations, inherent in important actions, naturally undertaken by the authorities. However, when they occur, no one is exempt from the effort: neither the prosecutors, nor the police, nor the investigators, nor the lawyers and, after all, neither the judges.

As a lawyer, do you put yourself in the prosecutor’s position? Do you use the experience of criminal investigations? It is said by many lawyers – former prosecutors – that the first profession will never leave them!

This is where I start from. I also need to know the approach of the prosecutor or, at least, to guess it. Thank goodness the experience of criminal investigations follows me, as does the expertise gathered there! A big gain in my training, for which, I say it again, I remain grateful. Nothing from the past is lost.

Do you have judges you remember?

I look at all the judges with a chosen deference. Each one, in different ways, manages to impress. Meeting a judge, interacting with him, even in the courtroom, does not leave you unchanged. It is an admirable concession of fate.

In the same context, were there any sentences that marked you professionally?

A sentence left a mark on me was one filled with wisdom, kindness and nobility, in the end.

Circumstantially, I was asked by an acquaintance to help his family, shaken by the misfortune that had fallen over everyone out of the blue. A 40-year-old man has been arrested. He was married, he had worked hard all his life, he was raising along with his wife, a little girl, who was then 11 years old. He had made a home for them, he was a very good man, a genuine family man. But he had an infirmity: a malformation at one of the eyes. His wife did not work, she chose to stay at home with her daughter, which increased his efforts and sacrifices. Finally, after many years, his wife went to work. Within a month she has an affair with a coworker. Later, she informed her husband of this “soul fulfillment” and began asking him to leave the house. He had suddenly become for his wife “the one-eyed guy” and was guilty for all the hardships of the family. In retrospect, anybody could understand what the circumstances were foreshadowing. He was pushed beyond his limits. Five knife stabs threw them both from marriage to hell.

It was a court case in which I found all the great writers of the world, in which I felt how we, the bearers of the robes, shared the suffering of the unleashed party. The judges found him guilty of attempted murder, but the sentence had the possibility of parole. I received the decision – he was released.

I went alone on a field and stayed in the wind for the rest of the day…

It was not in the usual type of case I take, but the incredible story of this man drew me in, so that I could finally have my soul at peace. By God, Humanity and Justice. By a sentence.

I once asked you, knowing that you had an important trial the next day, “who is the judge?” And you answered: “I have no idea! For me, the process begins when I enter the (court) room!” I think most lawyers already have a preconception about one judge or another.

Yes, I’m waiting for evidence-based Justice. In addition, I do not like the impurity that I notice in the case of many of the lawyers when they address the judges by name, in front of clients, looking to leave the impression of a true familiarity… As if not only that the lawyer “knows” the judge, but the judge, in turn, also “knows” the lawyer, possibly, from so many cases, through which they went “together.”

I don’t even like it when the client asks me who is the judge. I do not like to interact in this way with the judges, pronouncing their names. Obviously, they too are different, and I differentiate them.

LACK OF PROFESSIONALIM IS A SIN

When you have a guilty client, what strategy do you utilize?

In the world of Faith it is said that what you do, you must do as if you are doing it for God. That lack of professionalism is a sin. I heard this from Father Petru Moga from the “Saint Nicholas” Parish in Câmpina.

If the man is guilty or innocent, what we all want is in fact, Atonement, Recovery, the given second chance. This is the gain. Stakes (for burning) make me bitter, I consider them a mistake. My only strategy is to do my job as if I am doing it for God.

Is it essential for a lawyer to believe in the innocence of his client? Is a good lawyer the one who succeeds in acquitting a culprit?

A lawyer who succeeds in acquitting a culprit is a very good one. It is essential to believe in the innocence of the client, if he is innocent. If, however, he believes in his innocence, when the client is, in fact, guilty, then the lawyer is stupid, and the client will be satisfied that he has convinced at least one…

After the first meeting, lasting about 30 minutes, I know if a client is guilty or innocent, no matter what he tells me.

Are there certain people or certain acts that you would never defend?

There are many. I managed to keep the principles that define me as a man, before being a lawyer, to have a reconciled conscience and to be selective. I defend a select few.

Although you are passionate about the Criminal Law, even though you have been the lawyer of a multinational company for 13 years, HBO – with all the legal problems resulting from in this position – do you have occasional Commercial or Civil law cases?

I was and am a lawyer for other companies. The civil law is also part of my business practice. I still do business law. Negotiating a contract or winning a trial to recover a sum of money cannot be compared with the happiness you experience when you are dealing with criminal law cases… it all ends, and the man stays with his family.

In criminal law, the man entrusts you his freedom, business, family, his life. It is a great test and a proof of confidence that simply overwhelms you from the first moment. If you succeed, you can have the joy of going alone to a field. If you fail, your internal bleeding will remain with you.

After the victories obtained for the corporations it is nice: we go to fancy restaurants and enjoy drawings on the plate. I like it more on the field.

Who should you be judged by?

Out of any jury put together for my judgment, God and my son cannot be missing. All I would want is for these two to not have conflicting opinions. Then, regardless of the verdict, I would know that I found my Justice.

Do you have writers who have shaped you? Essential books?

Oh! … Balzac, Hugo, Dostoevsky … I also like Alexandru Paleologu, Andrei Pleșu. Most books are fundamental, I would say. One in particular, however, shaped me at the beginning of my road – “Martin Eden” by Jack London.

Maybe it was the first book after Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and something by Jules Verne. I was impressed from the first lines by the modest condition and the quirkiness of the young Martin. He shook me, “woke me up,” as if he were aware of it at some point, the explanation he understood for the difference and discrepancy that had, in fact, been amazed, inhibited and bothered. Having arrived poor and uneducated, in front of the books in a library, he looks equally astonished and understands: “In all this multitude of books lies power!”

In fact, he notes, it is the power to overcome your condition, to succeed in being civilized, mannered, to gain access and legitimacy for a different world.

An INM professor once told me that Kafka’s “Trial” and Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” are mandatory readings for a future jurist! Did you like them?

A “future jurist” will quickly understand, at one point, that life surpasses not only films, but books as well.

I didn’t like Kafka. That is why I do not like it now, when I meet or feel him, rarely to be honest, in real life. Dostoevsky, however, pierced my soul.

JUSTICE AS A TEMPTATION

The ideal age of a judge is now being discussed, in the context of the changes for the practice at the INM. Is a 25-year-old judge ready to decide a man’s freedom or imprisonment?

Believe me, a 25-year-old judge is no longer young. He is probably the oldest of the young people of his age. They have no easy mission, but they are invested with this confidence, precisely because they have come to confirm that they are different. I don’t want to think about what’s in their soul. However, it is a reality: at the age of 25 they are beginning their road. They will inevitably make mistakes, but that will help them not be the same at 30, 40 or 50 years. They will be the same even at 26, one year later.

Why has people’s confidence in justice been diminished?

The people’s confidence in just about everything diminished! In all institutions, in all values. They are “helped” to think in this way. Confidence, in oneself, seems to me to be tested as never before, on all levels, globally. People no longer trust each other, partnerships break down, from marriage to business. Institutions no longer trust each other, they attack each other, they do not cooperate anymore. Undermining the other becomes a lifeline and entertainment. The European Union is no longer trusted, the British are withdrawing, the Americans are impeaching their president, NATO seeks an antidote to the drift… It seems like there is no more stability in the world.

Undermining trust in state institutions, in the justice of the country (a pillar, in fact!), is the recipe for making the country vulnerable, for a weak Romania. The enmity, division in which some of its supporters would like to turn the opposing party into a detention camp, on the subject of justice and by using it, keep people busy and distract them from what is essential to a nation. When a magician takes out, with one hand, a rabbit from his hat, this surprises you because he had the skill to draw your attention, with the other hand, to something false or insignificant. This is not random! I truly believe in the impure character of this induced state of mind.

How do you see the future of Justice in Romania?

In the future I envision… there will be no more “All for justice.” This stupidity will be forgotten, and people will trust their Romanian institutions. For Justice “will be” only the well-educated professionals, guided by the knowledge, good intention and the chosen principles, which the citizens will credit, without reservation, so they would have, in turn, time to do their jobs in the best way possible.

In the future envisioned by me, the lessons told to my country by other democracies, which, in turn, blush in the cheeks, will meet not a Dongoroz, but 1000! The Constitutional Court of my Country will no longer be insulted on Facebook or in the streets, but will be greeted with a hand at heart from the Presidential Palace. We will have Codes so good that even the High Court will not have any decrees to pronounce.

We will no longer see magistrates on the court stairs, we will no longer find them concerned about with the laws they are called upon to implement, or with politicians, or with the future of their pension, or with the working conditions, because the Justice system will have a clear place in the state.

We will no longer find influencers among prosecutors or judges, nor stars who no longer wear the robe. As far as we can see there will be no scaffolding, there will be no “paradiți,” and in the penitentiaries we will hear that there are even vacant places. Not even those convicted will be considered “penali” anymore, but people, for whom there is the punishment and rehabilitation. In politics and in the courtrooms there will be only good-will, solemnity and professionalism. Lawyers will no longer plead in jeans, not with their ankles revealed, if they are men, nor in red sneakers and with sunglasses raised on the top of their heads.

The secret services will no longer be used in criminal cases, but they will, as always, make sure that their country is among the safest countries in a world that offers us insecurity every day.

In its imperfection, the Justice system remains, therefore, a temptation.