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Ex-minister Elena Udrea (recording from 2015)
Photo:
Vadim Ghirda / picture alliance / AP
The escaped Romanian ex-minister Elena Udrea has been arrested in Bulgaria.
The politician who was wanted was taken into custody near Kulata in the Bulgarian border area with Greece.
This was reported by the Bulgarian media, citing the Ministry of the Interior in Sofia.
The ex-minister's car was located in the border area.
She was initially detained for 24 hours because of a European arrest warrant issued in Romania.
Sentenced to six years imprisonment
The 48-year-old was sentenced to six years in prison on Thursday in Romania for corruption, but did not appear in court.
According to the Romanian border guard, Udrea had legally left the country in her car via the Giurgiu-Russe border crossing over the Danube bridge to Bulgaria on Thursday morning shortly before the verdict was announced.
From 2008 to 2012 Udrea was Minister for Tourism and Regional Development in the then bourgeois government in Bucharest under Prime Minister Emil Boc.
She had already fled justice in 2018 – back then to Costa Rica.
There she was tracked down with the help of Interpol and extradited to Romania in 2019.
as/dpa