Bucharest - A Romanian army colonel believed to be the brains behind a cigarette-smuggling scandal that has rocked the government was arrested yesterday after several days on the run. Col Gheorghe Trutulescu was arrested in the western city of Arad.
The scandal erupted last week after 3,000 cases of cigarettes were smuggled into Romania on board a Ukrainian plane chartered by a Bulgarian firm, landing at the military airport of Otopeni outside Bucharest.
It developed further when Col Trutulescu told a press agency that the racket had been organised by the state and the cash siphoned off into political party coffers.