Romania's ruling party chief headed to prison for graft

Romania's Supreme Court upheld a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence for graft against ruling Social Democrat Party leader Liviu Dragnea on Monday, one day after his party lost a European election to centrist groupings.

Since coming to power in late 2016, the Social Democrats have steadily chipped away at the independence of the judiciary, raising sharp criticism from the European Union and triggering Romania's largest street protests in decades.

On Sunday, voters overwhelmingly backed a referendum called by centrist President Klaus Iohannis to prevent Dragnea's party from further weakening the courts.

The Supreme Court found 56-year-old Dragnea, who is also Speaker of the lower house of Parliament, guilty of keeping two women on the payroll of a child protection state agency for years even though they were working for his party.

He appealed against the initial verdict last year and was free pending the appeal, but Monday's ruling was final and he was expected to go to prison later in the day.

Dragnea, who was the first PSD leader to come from outside the capital and has kept a tight grip on the party, was already barred from being Prime Minister by a previous conviction in a vote rigging case.

Graft issues spurred Romanians to sanction the PSD in the European Parliament election, where the party's support halved to 22.6 percent from the last national ballot in 2016.

Tens of thousands of Romanians working abroad were unable to vote on Sunday after queuing for hours outside consulates and polling stations because of bureaucracy and staffing problems.

Analysts said video footage from voting stations across Europe of Romanians chanting "We want to vote" and "Thieves" amplified the ruling party's loss.

Dragnea, who is also under investigation in a separate case on suspicion of forming a criminal group to siphon off cash from state projects, has denied all charges and repeatedly said he was the victim of a "parallel state" of politically-motivated prosecutors and secret services.

Luiza Ilie & Radu-Sorin Marinas