# Sorina-Luminița Plăcintă

# Sorina-Luminița Plăcintă

Sorina-Luminița Plăcintă (born 6 February 1965 in Vrancea County) is a Romanian textile engineer, clothing manufacturer and former politician. By 2022 she was also referred to in the press as Sorina Bucuraș. She sat in the Senate of Romania for Vrancea from 15 December 2008 to 14 December 2012, after election on 30 November 2008 in single-member college 1 and validation on 19 December 2008. From 14 July 2009 she was minister of youth and sport in the cabinet of [Emil Boc](/people/emil-boc), sworn in at Cotroceni Palace the evening Monica Iacob-Ridzi resigned, and on 22 December 2009 she marked the end of that tenure of five and a half months as the ministry was absorbed into the education portfolio.

The Senate biography quoted by Mediafax when she was nominated said she had graduated in 1989 from the Faculty of Textile Technology and Chemistry in Iași. The same official page, as read by the Galați daily *Viața Liberă*, also listed “Facultatea «Dunărea de Jos» – Drept civil, 2002–2004”; the law faculty of the state Dunărea de Jos University in Galați told the paper that its records contained no student of that name, or under the surname Sobota. Mediafax, still citing the Senate biography, reported that she worked from 1989 to 1993 as an engineer at the worsted-wool spinning mill in Focșani, in 1993–1994 as an assistant manager at SC Arusco Impex in Bucharest, and from 1994 as a shareholder and administrator of SC Sorste, alongside a board chairmanship at SC Milcofil from 1997 to 2008 and the posts of administrator and general director at SC Artifex from 2005 to 2008. In 2022 *Adevărul* described her as the owner of the Sorste group in Focșani, whose clothing clients included Massimo Dutti, Luisa Spagnoli, Benetton, Zara and KappAhl.

She entered government as a senator of the [Democratic Liberal Party](/organizations/democratic-liberal-party). President [Traian Băsescu](/people/traian-basescu) signed the decree naming her minister after Boc proposed her, and the decrees were published in the Official Gazette. On 1 October 2009, after Social Democratic ministers left the cabinet, she also became interim minister for relations with Parliament. At her end-of-term press conference she called the absorption of the youth and sport ministry a decision taken because of the economic crisis, and said the institution had had an investment budget of nearly 64 million lei. On 13 June 2012 she announced from the Senate rostrum that she was leaving the Democratic Liberal parliamentary group for the group of the National [Liberal Party](/organizations/liberal-party). In April 2022 Ludovic Orban included her in the Vrancea initiative group of [Forța Dreptei](/organizations/force-of-the-right); she told G4Media that she was leaving [the Liberals](/organizations/the-liberals) because she no longer accepted their governing alliance with the [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats).

In January 2010 the National Integrity Agency asked the prosecutor’s office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice to investigate her for false statements, reporting that interest declarations filed between 15 December 2008 and 27 July 2009 had omitted shareholdings and administrator posts at Sorste, Milcofil, Depsorste and Artifex. On 4 November 2013 the High Court rejected an appeal by her son, Andrei Răzvan Plăcintă, and left in force a sentence of four and a half years’ imprisonment for attempted murder arising from an incident on 6 December 2010 in Bucharest. A decade after she left the front bench, local reporting still identified her with the Focșani clothing business and with the new Vrancea branch of Forța Dreptei.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and family background

Sorina-Luminița Plăcintă was born on 6 February 1965 in Focșani, the county seat of Vrancea. The birth was registered on 10 February 1965, as entry no. 85, at the town people's council. The Senate of Romania later recorded the same date and gave the place only as Vrancea. Her mother was Leonia Ștefan, later Ciungan. The father on the certificate was Ștefan Stan, her mother's husband.

In a 2014 petition she told the Focșani court that she had grown up treating Ștefan Stan as her father, and that her mother had only later described a relationship, from 1963 to 1966, with Simon Mendel, also called Mendel Simon, a Focșani man whose wife and two sons had gone to Israel. She wrote that Ștefan Stan, a Miliție employee, drank heavily and treated her mother badly, and that the couple divorced in 1973; Mendel, who died in Focșani on 18 November 1977, had given her gifts including a ring and earrings. On 20 April 2016 the court, in decision 3358/2016, held that Ștefan Stan was not her biological father and ordered his name removed; it rejected, for lack of the defendants' standing, the request to establish Mendel's paternity. A further action followed in 2017. *Adevărul* later reported that the Focșani court had recognized her as Simon Mendel's daughter, a filiation the city's lawyers said she could prove. Published accounts do not name a primary or secondary school.

### Textile engineering at Iași

The curriculum vitae issued with her July 2009 ministerial nomination states that she graduated in 1989 from the Faculty of Textile Technology and Chemistry in Iași. The city's textile faculty has been in Iași since 1952 and was absorbed in 1955 by the Polytechnic Institute named for Gheorghe Asachi; on 17 May 1993 the institute became the Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iași, so the degree predates that title. Unlike the law line on the same biography, no university contradicted the textile qualification, and her own account of studying in Iași fits a course finished at the end of the 1980s.

In October 2009, at the launch of that year's Student Galas, she described the shortages of those years. Without an Iași identity card she could not buy bread, she said, so classmates took it from the canteen while she talked with the staff; shops, as she remembered them, offered little besides shrimp and tomato paste. Bacon was kept between dormitory window panes, and a pot of sarmale sent by her mother from Focșani, through a locomotive driver, arrived still warm. She also recalled riding without a ticket from Iași to Bucharest to see the magnolias in Cișmigiu Gardens, skipping classes, listening to Pink Floyd, and the humor group Divertis.

### Law studies and the Senate curriculum vitae

The same Senate biography carried a second studies line. In mid-July 2009, as *Libertatea* and Mediafax repeated it, the entry read "Faculty «Dunărea de Jos» – Civil Law, 2002–2004," without saying whether that meant a finished degree, a master's course, or studies left incomplete. There is no faculty by that name, and a law licentiate is not a two-year program. The state Dunărea de Jos University of Galați does have a law faculty, but spokesperson Luiza Șerbănescu said its registers held no graduate named Sorina Luminița Plăcintă. A faculty official told *Viața Liberă* that neither electronic records nor paper files, from the faculty's founding, contained her name or Sobota, then her married name.

Reporters found her instead at the private Danubius University in Galați. Vasilica Negruț, dean of its law faculty, said she was a distance-learning student in the first year, 2008–2009, which had just ended, and that a "faculty of civil law" was not in the nomenclature: the field was law, specialization law. Spokesperson Alina Șooș said Plăcintă had enrolled in 2000 in the reduced-attendance form, passed two years with good marks, and left in 2002, then re-enrolled in 2008. *Viața Liberă* reported that she had been promoted to the second year, again with good marks, though it could not say whether she had passed every examination. First-year subjects it listed included general theory of law, civil law, constitutional law, administrative law and Roman law; physical education was optional. [Antena 3](/organizations/antena-3) reported that the Senate biography was corrected on the afternoon of 17 July 2009. No later public account has documented a completed law diploma; the qualification the curricula vitae continue to record is the 1989 engineering course.

## Textile enterprises

### Founding of Sorste

Sorina-Luminița Plăcintă’s clothing firms belonged to the export workshops that, after 1989, made Romania a large European source of outsourced apparel, much of it lohn, cut-make-trim work in which the foreign buyer supplied the cloth and paid mainly for labour. Maria Grapini, then president of the light-industry employers’ federation FEPAIUS, said in December 2008 that lohn producers would be the firms most exposed to the crisis. She put employment in the sector at about 312,500 after the first seven months of 2008, down by roughly 150,000 from about 448,000 in 2004, with garment-making alone down by 100,000 people, to 193,200.

Plăcintă, a textile engineer, was a trainee at the Milcofil mill in Focșani, Vrancea County, until 1992, when she met Ștefan Sobota—also spelled Sabota later—a businessman from Sweden. She became production manager at a clothing firm he owned. Ziarul Financiar later reported that its first supply contract was with H&M, and that in 1994 the two founded Sorste with an investment she put at 50,000 dollars. A compilation of trade-register data gives 4 January 1995 as the incorporation date of Sorste SA (CUI 6704250), seated in Focșani for the manufacture of clothing. In October 2004 Ziarul Financiar wrote that Sorste’s output went entirely to buyers such as Marks & Spencer, H&M, Levi Strauss & Co., Max Mara and the houses Kenzo and Lacroix.

### Milcofil, Artifex and export work

The expansion ran through former state plants and a Swiss-owned workshop whose tie to Plăcintă the register did not match her account. HotNews, citing Ziarul de Iași, reported that in 1998 the Court of Accounts examined dealings between Sorste, where she was an administrator, and Milcofil, where Sorste held 40 percent and the State Ownership Fund and SIF Moldova held the rest. The court found an interest contrary to Milcofil arising from her role at Sorste, including space let to Sorste well below the rent charged to other tenants. Sorste, controlled by Plăcintă and Sobota, later became the majority owner, amid reported disputes with dismissed workers left without severance. On a 2008 campaign site she said Sorste held 92 percent of Milcofil.

In October 2004 Sorste paid 1.9 million euro for a majority of Confectia Râmnicu Sărat, which Ziarul Financiar called the last clothing producer still in state hands. The plant made civilian clothes and military uniforms and until 1997 had been part of the Army Industrial Group under the Ministry of National Defence. [Gigi Becali](/people/gigi-becali) bid with the former director, Gheorghe Nicolae. Adevărul later reported a merger into Sorste in December 2007, a last day at Râmnicu Sărat of 15 January 2009, and the handover of the land and buildings to a supermarket chain, with about 400 light-industry jobs replaced by about 60 in retail.

Other customer names come from her publicity and interviews, not from published contracts. The 2008 campaign site, quoted by Ziare.com, said Sorste worked only for export, “in general mass-production”, for names including [Valentino](/people/valentino), “Bennetton”, H&M and IKEA, and that Artifex SRL did “hy fashion” for clients including D&G, COS, “Massimo Dutii”, Akris, Uomo Piu and Crombie. The article noted the misspellings of Benetton, Massimo Dutti and “high fashion”. A Ziarul Financiar account of the same site put a wider group of assets—land, the Fashion Center hotel and a staff clinic—at nearly 25 million dollars, a figure distinct from Sorste’s filed turnover.

Artifex, founded in 2005, is the firm she later used to explain Sorste’s collapse in the accounts. In September 2011 she told Ziarul Financiar that most contracts and employees had moved there under a Romanian–Swiss partnership, and that this, not the crisis, caused the drop. The trade register, as the paper reported it, did not list her as a shareholder: 99.9 percent was held by Akris, registered in Switzerland, and the minority holder was Peter Kriemler. Artifex turnover rose from 57 million lei in 2009 to 70 million lei in 2010, with about 920 employees; she said the headcount reached 1,250 in 2011 and that both firms exported 99.8 percent of output, including for Valentino, Dolce & Gabbana and Max Mara.

[Ministry of Finance](/organizations/ministry-of-finance) figures in that article put Sorste’s turnover at 75 million lei (22.5 million euro) in 2007, with more than 1,000 employees, and at 7.7 million lei (1.8 million euro) in 2010, when net profit was 0.3 million lei. She said staff were about 50 in 2009, 153 in 2010 and 250 by September 2011. In January 2013 she said prices followed minutes of labour, citing a blouse for Gucci against a mass-market one, and estimated revenue of 9 million euro, nearly double 2012, with exports at 99 percent of output.

### Results after she left office

Filed results after she left office show a rebound and then a much smaller company. Profit.ro, using Finance Ministry data, reported that in 2016 the Sorste group—active since 1994, with home, fashion and engineering divisions and about 300 employees—had one of its highest turnovers in ten years and profit double the year before. A 2018 follow-up put 2016 net profit at 3.8 million lei and 2017 turnover at 74.3 million lei, slightly under that high, with net profit of 1.3 million lei and average staff cut from 309 to 118. It said Sorste sold under the brand ASHA, listed customers such as Massimo Dutti, Zara and Benetton, and was wholly controlled by Sorina Bucuraș, Plăcintă’s later name.

The recovery did not hold. A database of the filed accounts shows turnover of 25,357,610 lei in 2022 (24 employees; net profit 670,259 lei), 27,063,714 lei in 2023 (32 employees; profit 166,699 lei) and 23,126,463 lei in 2024 (46 employees; profit 63,320 lei). Ziarul Financiar reported the same years in round figures—27 million lei and 166,000 lei of profit for 2023, then 23 million lei, down almost 15 percent, and profit down 62 percent to 66,000 lei for 2024. The database’s next summary, measured against 2024, lists 23,196,380 lei of turnover, 911,350 lei of net profit and 26 employees.

She told the paper that Sorste moved production to Tunisia in 2019 and closed that plant during the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic), for lack of comparable support and because of a rent she said she could not pay. In 2024 and 2025 she said output was entirely for export, that lohn was about 35 percent of the business and integrated production the rest, and that the firm had worked for Massimo Dutti, Zara, Benetton and Valentino.

## Senate career

### The 2008 election in Vrancea

In the [2008 Romanian parliamentary election](/facts/2008-romanian-parliamentary-election) of 30 November, Sorina-Luminița Plăcintă stood for the Senate of Romania in uninominal college 1 of constituency no. 41, Vrancea County, for the Democratic Liberal Party (PD-L). The county electoral bureau's final tally for that college—159 polling stations, 151,497 voters on the lists, 73,875 voting and 69,464 valid votes—placed Gică Duță of the Social Democratic Party–Conservative Party alliance (PSD+PC) first, with 30,774 votes (44.30%). Plăcintă was second with 25,036 (36.04%), and Eugen Teodorovici third with 12,321 (17.73%). County turnout was about 47% (151,494 of 323,215 registered voters). On the Senate ballot PSD+PC took 51.34% (73,015 votes), PD-L 31.18% (44,345) and the National Liberal Party (PNL) 15.61% (22,211).

A college was won outright only with an absolute majority. In Vrancea's other Senate college Miron Mitrea (PSD+PC) cleared that bar, with 58.06% (42,241 of 72,743 valid votes); the PD-L candidate there, Dănuț Popoiu, had 26.54% (19,309). Duță led college 1 but fell short of 50%, so the seat depended on redistribution. The published list of new parliamentarians assigned college 1 to Plăcintă and college 2 to Mitrea. The Senate validated her on 19 December 2008 by Decision no. 68/2008, with the mandate running from 15 December 2008 to 18 December 2012. She was returned as a PD-L senator; after she left that party in June 2012, the completed fiche lists her formation and group as the PNL. She did not stand in December 2012. On 18 June the PNL spokesman Mihai Voicu said she no longer wanted another parliamentary term and that her approach to the PNL was not conditioned on a candidacy; on 19 September she confirmed to Mediafax that she would not seek the Senate seat in college 1 again.

### Committees and interparliamentary groups

From 19 December 2008 until 9 September 2009 she was vice-president of the committee on agriculture, forestry and rural development. She then sat on the committee for privatisation and the administration of state assets until 2 March 2011, on the foreign-policy committee from 28 June 2010 to 4 April 2011, and from 4 April 2011 on the committee for human rights, religious denominations and minorities. She was also a member of the Parliament of Romania's joint committee for European affairs from 17 February 2009 to 3 June 2011, and of the Senate's European-affairs committee from 2 March 2011. The September 2009 move came while she was in government as minister of youth and sport, covered separately; she kept the Senate seat.

From 9 March 2009 the Senate fiche places her in the friendship groups with the Republic of Korea (member), Sweden (vice-president) and Bulgaria (member). From 31 May 2011 she was president of the group with Egypt. For the full term the Senate counts 24 plenary speeches in 368 sittings, an electronic vote in 113 of 198 sittings, 16 political statements, five questions, four interpellations and no motions.

### Legislative initiatives

The completed Senate record attributes 45 legislative initiatives to her, 10 of them promulgated as laws. Early work was largely co-signature. By mid-July 2009 she had signed 11 proposals, delivered 12 political statements and put three questions and three interpellations; an Institute for Public Policy count cited by Mediafax put her attendance in the February–June 2009 session at 85%.

Those 11 proposals concerned the meal-voucher law; a national programme for owner-occupied housing; unfair commercial practices toward consumers; the professions of general nurse, midwife and medical assistant and their professional order; the state child allowance (Law no. 63/1993); support for Romanians abroad (Law no. 299/2007); guarding of goods and protection of persons (Law no. 333/2003); a state–church partnership in social assistance; and state help with land-book registration of restored agricultural and forest land outside built-up areas. The land-registration bill was later withdrawn by its initiators. A consumer-protection amendment to Government Ordinance no. 21/1992, Senate file L590/2009, which she signed with three other senators, was rejected by the Senate on 16 December 2009 and, the [Chamber of Deputies](/organizations/chamber-of-deputies) being the decision chamber, rejected there on 23 June 2010 by 239 votes to 5, with two abstentions.

On 23 March 2010 the Senate, as first chamber, adopted a PD-L bill on the insolvency of natural persons, 76 votes to 3, with every parliamentary group supporting it in the plenary. Plăcintă was a signatory. As described at the vote, the procedure was meant to cover creditors' claims, including by liquidating the debtor's assets in a personal bankruptcy, and could be opened at the request of a debtor acknowledging insolvency in good faith or of a creditor with a certain, liquid and due claim.

Her statements in that first half-year covered, among other subjects, Romania's stand at the organic-products fair in Nuremberg, agriculture and the share of CEC Bank and EximBank resources directed to it, wine prices, the Easter lamb and taxes, swine flu, press freedom, decentralisation and child-raising benefits. One question asked that specifications for uniforms and service clothing bought by public bodies, in particular the National Forest Administration (Romsilva), be revised so Romanian textile producers could compete; she said the money was going to factories in Asia, a sector in which she herself did business. Agriculture minister Ilie Sârbu replied that Romsilva had bought only from domestic producers, but that other operators could not be shut out. Further questions concerned the reinstatement of the school director in Bordeasca Veche and European funds for communal households; interpellations addressed the agriculture ministry's strategy, sponsorship of the National Music Olympiad in Focșani, and the reallocation of budget sums.

## Minister of Youth and Sport

### Appointment after the Ridzi resignation

On 14 July 2009 Monica Maria Iacob-Ridzi resigned as minister of youth and sport in the cabinet of Emil Boc, after nearly seven months in office. She said she did not want the dispute over Youth Day spending to damage the government or the Democratic Liberal Party (PDL). Boc accepted the resignation and proposed Sorina-Luminița Plăcintă, the PDL senator for Vrancea County. Traian Băsescu signed Decree no. 1,209, recording the vacancy, and Decree no. 1,210, designating her minister of youth and sport on the prime minister's proposal. Both appeared the same day in *Monitorul Oficial* no. 489. She took the oath that evening at Cotroceni Palace, with Boc and other ministers present.

The vacancy followed spending on National Youth Day. The [National Anticorruption Directorate](/organizations/national-anticorruption-directorate) later alleged that, between 17 March and 22 May 2009, Ridzi had illegally awarded private firms contracts of about 3.12 million lei, above the approved budget. On 16 February 2015 the High Court of Cassation and Justice made final a five-year prison sentence for abuse of office over those events.

Reports at the swearing-in described Plăcintă as a senator and textile businesswoman, and noted a declaration listing property in Focșani and at Montreux.

The sports state secretary's post was also open. Octavian Bellu had asked on 10 July to leave, calling the system blocked and without a future; Boc approved the request on 15 July. On 26 July Plăcintă said sports federations and the Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee had proposed Olympic runner Doina Melinte. HotNews reported that Mariana Bitang and Elena Frâncu had declined. Boc signed Melinte's appointment on 31 July.

At her first press conference, on 12 August, she promised a national strategy within a month and said spending should follow priorities. She proposed cutting the establishment from 401 posts—88 vacant when she arrived—to at most 212, starting with vacancies, and noted that the ministry had had 130 posts in 2003. The plan also covered the National Centre for the Training and Further Training of Coaches and the National Research Institute for Sport. Commissions drafted a decentralisation scheme under which sports centres and leisure bases would pass to local councils, with some kept by the ministry. She put investment funds at about 18 million euro, of which a little over 1 million euro had been spent by 1 August. The ministry held no event for International Youth Day, which fell that day.

After an attack on 24 September outside Dinamo stadium, following Dinamo–CS Zlatna in the Romanian Cup, she said hooliganism had again brought Romanian sport close to a tragedy and backed tougher penalties, warning that clubs could be excluded from European competitions. Police said 33 people had been questioned.

On 8 October she said she wanted Government Decision no. 1447/2007 amended because it capped performance athletes' income at 700 lei a month, after talks with the Olympic committee.

On 30 October the ministry and the National Agency for Community Programmes in the Field of Education and Vocational Training announced two projects under the European Union's Youth in Action programme, "Ia atitudine!" and "Informează-te și implică-te!". November courses in Bucharest, Poiana Brașov and Tulnici, in Vrancea, were to train young people and youth-organisation representatives to set up an NGO and to write funding applications.

### Interim minister for relations with Parliament

On 1 October 2009 [Mircea Geoană](/people/mircea-geoana), president of the Social Democratic Party, said the party's ministers would resign in solidarity with deputy prime minister Dan Nica, dismissed that morning by Băsescu. Victor Ponta, minister for relations with Parliament, was among them. Boc announced the same day that PDL ministers would cover the vacated posts for at most 45 days, and named Plăcintă interim minister for relations with Parliament while she kept youth and sport. He said the cabinet would keep its commitments to the International Monetary Fund and the [European Commission](/organizations/european-commission).

Decree no. 1,368 of 1 October 2009, published in *Monitorul Oficial* no. 649, made the designation. It cited Ponta's resignation, Boc's proposal, and Article 107(4) of the Constitution, which allows an interim minister for up to 45 days.

She took over the department on 2 October. Ponta was at a rally in Spain, so state secretary Valentin Iliescu conducted the handover. Plăcintă asked directors for activity reports and said staff would not be replaced. She said she did not know whether the second post brought extra pay. She also said that, after youth state secretary Răzvan Bobeanu left, she had not filled that post and had assigned the work to under-secretary Costin Neagu.

The 45-day window did not run its course. On 13 October Parliament adopted a motion of no confidence, initiated by the National Liberal Party and the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania and backed by the PSD, by 254 votes to 176. Mediafax reported that the Boc cabinet had been dismissed.

### Abolition of the ministry and exit from government

Plăcintă was not in the cabinet formed after the presidential election. Parliament's Decision no. 39/2009 granted confidence to a new Boc government, and Decree no. 1,902 of 23 December 2009 appointed it. Daniel Petru Funeriu became minister of education, research, youth and sport; the decree listed no separate minister of youth and sport.

On 22 December she said Boc had decided the previous week to fold the ministry into education under Funeriu if Parliament invested the cabinet. She called that a crisis decision and said she hoped sport would not rank last in the new ministry. She described a term of five and a half months, from 14 July, during which she said the image damaged by the Ridzi affair had been repaired, cited an initial investment budget of nearly 64 million lei for subordinate sports and youth units, and said decentralisation already begun should continue. She said she would go on supporting athletes from the Senate.

Government Emergency Ordinance no. 115 of 23 December 2009, published in *Monitorul Oficial* no. 919 of 29 December, put the merger into law. Article 6 established the Ministry of Education, Research, Youth and Sport by reorganising the Ministry of Education, Research and Innovation and by taking over youth and sport, and the specialised structures, from the Ministry of Youth and Sport, which was abolished. The preamble cited the recession and loan commitments on the 2010 deficit, and the ordinance transferred staff and assets to the new ministry.

## Party affiliation

### Democratic Party and the Democratic Liberal Party

Plăcintă dated her membership of the Democratic Party (Partidul Democrat, PD) to 1997. On 26 July 2009, as minister of youth and sport, she told Antena 3: "Eu sunt membru PD din 1997. Sunt un capitalist şi cred în această politică de dreapta." She said she became active only in 2008, for the uninominal vote, when a candidate was no longer carried on a party list.

In December 2007 the PD and the [Liberal Democratic Party](/organizations/liberal-democratic-party) announced that they would form the Democratic Liberal Party (Partidul Democrat-Liberal, PD-L). She sat in the Senate for Vrancea County as a PD-L member. In the 2009 interview she denied belonging to a "Flutur–Stolojan" camp inside the party. She said her first link was with Gheorghe Flutur, responsible for the Vrancea organization, and that Theodor Stolojan had visited her textile factory out of curiosity about the industry.

Senate president Vasile Blaga, commenting on her 2012 resignation, said he had not been told but had suspected it, and described a rise "de la simplă membră la senator, pe urmă prim-vicepreşedinte la Bucureşti."

### Move to the National Liberal Party

On 27 April 2012, during the censure motion that dismissed the Ungureanu cabinet, PD-L senator Plăcintă was filmed crying in the chamber during a conversation with [Elena Udrea](/people/elena-udrea), leader of the PD-L in Bucharest, and repeating "Nu mai pot." Udrea had just told reporters she did not believe Plăcintă had abandoned the party's principles; she then sat beside her. After about ten minutes, senator Radu F. Alexandru led Plăcintă out. Asked if she would vote for the motion, she said, in a shaking voice, that she would, and that nobody was threatening her. She did not vote.

Victor Ponta of the Social Democratic Party and [Crin Antonescu](/people/crin-antonescu), president of the National Liberal Party (Partidul Național Liberal, PNL), said Udrea had subjected her to "ameninţări în direct cu lucruri de cea mai dură factură." Udrea denied it. Antonescu said neither he nor the PNL had negotiated with her: "A declarat la un moment dat că vrea să voteze moţiunea de cenzură, dar atât. Noi ne-am bucurat. Nu am avut niciun fel de discuţie cu ea."

On her blog, as reported by Mediafax, she wrote that there were no robot politicians and that there came moments when "simţi că nu mai poţi." She linked the scene to a political fight she called "acerbă şi fără rost," said she had given way emotionally with Udrea, whom she respected for a "personalitatea ei puternică," and said she had been the target of "dezinformării şi a intoxicării pe surse," especially about her husband and son.

On 13 June 2012 she told the Senate: "Vă anunţ că începând de astăzi încetez activitatea în grupul PDL şi voi activa în grupul PNL." PNL Senate leader Puiu Hașotti said talks had started before the censure motion, chiefly through Nini Săpunaru, president of PNL Vrancea, and that she would sit with the PNL group and in the county organization. Mediafax later reported that she had enrolled in the PNL.

PD-L senator Radu Berceanu said she had "pierdut trenul" and should have left "când a fost cu plânsetele şi cu bocetele," and that for him those who left were "trădători." Cezar Preda, of the PD-L in Buzău, called her "un alt mare caracter al politicii româneşti" and said she had been brought in three months before elections and made a minister because she was among those then in power—a timetable that conflicts with her 1997 statement. Deputy leader Mircea Toader called the exit "lipsită de caracter." The same day, PNL deputy Ludovic Orban told Mediafax: "Sorina Plăcintă nu are ce căuta în PNL, după ce s-a prostituat în cel mai jalnic mod. În ceea ce mă priveşte, voi vota împotriva venirii ei şi împotriva oricărei candidaturi a acesteia în partid."

She did not stand again. On 19 September 2012 she confirmed to Mediafax that she would not seek another Senate term in uninominal college 1 of constituency 41, Vrancea. Reports from that campaign do not record a candidacy for the PNL or for the Social Liberal Union, the PNL–PSD alliance.

### Forța Dreptei

On 11 April 2022 the national bureau of Force of the Right (Forța Dreptei), chaired by Orban, mandated an initiative group for a Vrancea branch. The county leadership in the party statement included Sorina Bucuraș, the name she was then using, with deputy Ion Ștefan, a former development minister who had left the PNL, and other local figures. G4Media reported that she was leaving the PNL for Orban's party. *Adevărul* in Focșani called it a return to the county's political foreground after ten years, and noted two Forța Dreptei deputies already there from the PNL, Ștefan and Ionel Dancă.

She told G4Media: "Decizia de a mă alătura Forței Drepte este consecința faptului că nu m-am mai regăsit în această alianță, pentru că am mai trecut printr-o alianță PNL – PSD și nu a fost bine." Of Orban's 2012 remarks she said "oamenii mai au dreptul să greșească," that he had spoken to her rather than the reverse, and that she believed he had lacked "toate datele problemei" then. The invitation she accepted, she said, came from Ștefan. The party statement said the branch would stay faithful to the 2020 vote, which it said had rejected a PNL–PSD alliance. *Monitorul de Vrancea* named Bucuraș as the best-known figure in the group announced through Ștefan, while misstating her former mandate as that of a PD-L deputy.

## Wealth declarations and integrity checks

### Declared assets and income

The wealth declaration Sorina-Luminița Plăcintă filed in June 2009 with the Senate of Romania, as senator for Vrancea County, listed two plots in Focșani of 5,178 and 1,249 square metres and three buildings there of 140, 946 and 121 square metres, all bought in 2004. It also listed a 144-square-metre property in Montreux, Switzerland, taxable value 400,000 euros, bought in 2007 by her husband and business partner, together with a Dacia (1999), a Renault (2000) and a Skoda (2003), jewellery of 40,000 euros acquired from 2000 to 2008, and paintings and furniture of a similar value acquired from 2004 to 2008. After reports questioned whether the Swiss property existed, she told HotNews that the apartment, at Avenue des Alpes 47, belonged entirely to her husband, as the declaration said, and that the family visited it. Reporting identified her husband, Sorste's administrator, as Sobota Ernest Stefan Georg, a Swedish citizen.

The June 2009 form showed two accounts at BRD – Groupe Société Générale, opened in 2004 and 2007, with 1,138,313.81 lei and 13,881.88 euros, and a 2006 BRD loan of 57,454 lei. Her December 2008 declaration had listed four Bucharest BRD accounts: 108,649.83 euros (opened in 2004), 425,078.42 lei (2007), 207.66 Swiss francs (2006) and 6,587.69 euros (2004). For 2008 she declared dividends of 1,442,399 lei from Sorste SA and annual income of 181,364 lei, and described herself as a Sorste shareholder and an associate of Spapmen and Depsorste; Mediafax added that the trade register also showed her as an associate of Milcofil SA. HotNews reported that the December 2008 declarations named only Sorste, while those of 12 June 2009 added Spapmen SRL and Depsorste SRL, in which register extracts gave her 5 per cent against Sorste's 95 per cent, last recorded on 30 November 2005; the same extracts gave her 96 per cent of Sorste. The National Integrity Agency later recorded a net Senate indemnity of 35,079 lei from 15 December 2008 to 13 July 2009.

### The integrity-agency investigation

On 15 July 2009 HotNews reported that Plăcintă, a Democratic Liberal Party senator and newly appointed minister of youth and sport, had omitted from her December 2008 and June 2009 interest declarations a 91.84 per cent holding in Milcofil SA, a Vrancea spinning mill privatized in 1997. It added that Milcofil's censors included children of officials at the National Agency for Fiscal Administration, the Vrancea Financial Guard and the local tax administration, who told HotNews the firms paid their taxes and received no special treatment; Plăcintă was not reached for comment. The agency later said it had acted of its own motion after the HotNews article, which its communiqué dated 16 July 2009, both on interest declarations and on incompatibilities. Mediafax reported on 23 July, from agency sources, that a wealth check had begun, while the press office declined to discuss it; she was notified that day, and her lawyer saw the file on 30 September 2009.

On 24 July she wrote to HotNews that declarations are filed or updated each year by 15 June for the previous fiscal year, and that on 31 December 2008 she was not a Milcofil shareholder. She said the shareholders then were Sorste SA and other individuals, and that an assignment of Sorste shares on 26 May 2009, registered on 2 June, belonged in the declaration for 2009. She also said a shareholders' meeting had ended, from November 2008, her role as administrator of the Swiss company Maya Textiles SA.

On 28 January 2010 the agency sent the file to the prosecutor's office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice. It said declarations filed from 15 December 2008 to 27 July 2009 were incomplete and inaccurate, and that these were solid indications of the offence of false statements under article 292 of the Criminal Code, which only the judicial authorities could determine. On the documents it had received, she held 630,398 Milcofil shares in 2008 (91.84 per cent of profits) and administered that company until 17 February 2009; administered Artifex SRL from 26 October 2005 to 7 April 2009 and Sorste SA from 19 December 2007 to 17 February 2009; was a Sorste shareholder; and held 5 per cent of Depsorste SRL. The communiqué noted that the interest declaration of 15 December 2008 did list 18,456 Sorste shares in Focșani, valued at 75,669.6 lei, yet classed that declaration as omitting shareholder status in Sorste, Milcofil and Depsorste and, at point 2, the administrator posts at Milcofil, Sorste and Artifex, although the wealth declaration of the same day reported income as Milcofil's administrator. The interest declarations of 4 June 2009 and of her ministerial appointment were said to omit the Milcofil holding and the administrator posts at Milcofil, Sorste and Artifex. Checks of wealth, conflicts of interest and incompatibilities were suspended until the case was decided.

She told Mediafax, as quoted by HotNews, that her asset declaration was drawn up correctly and that the matter was a misunderstanding which another look at the documents would clear. She said the referral, as she understood it, concerned 2009, for which no declaration was yet due, and that the changes described belonged to 2009 rather than to the 2008 return. To Antena 3 she said she was no longer an administrator on the date of the wealth declaration, that the trade register lags the minutes, and that those minutes had been at the Senate's Permanent Bureau since July; Jurnalul reported the same defence. No public indictment, conviction, acquittal or decision not to prosecute on this referral was identified in later reporting.

## Family and later public life

### Marriages and name changes

Plăcintă’s parliamentary surname came from a first marriage, to an engineer who was also the father of her son, Andrei Răzvan Plăcintă, usually called Andrei Plăcintă in the press. A second marriage was to the Swedish businessman Stefan Ernest Sobota. In January 2010, while a senator, she confirmed in a blog post carried by *Ziarul de Vrancea* that it was ending. The paper gave their ages as 45 and 62, described them as business partners as well as spouses, and noted that Andrei was a child of the earlier marriage. On 9 September 2011, at a book launch in Focșani, she appeared with the Timișoara urologist Viorel Bucuraș and told reporters, “We are not getting married; we already have,” adding that they had been on a honeymoon. Both wore wedding rings. *Adevărul* described him as her third husband and wrote that he, too, had been married before.

On 8 October 2011 the couple had a Romanian Orthodox wedding at a church she had built in the yard of her Focșani clothing factory before she entered the Senate of Romania. Her son attended; *Jurnalul* reported that no politicians of the Democratic Liberal Party were present. The parish priest of the Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God and the Holy Apostle Andrew, in the city’s industrial area, later identified her as that church’s founder: construction ran from 2005 to a consecration in 2008, and the painting was consecrated on 21 November 2016. He also named her and Tomiță Cosma as the principal donors of a Dormition church at Repedea, in Străoane, consecrated in 2006. In July 2012, by then a senator of the National Liberal Party, she said she had taken the surname Bucuraș—“I could not refuse my husband”—and had changed her identity papers the previous week. The Senate site had not yet recorded it. Bucuraș, former head of urology at the Timișoara county hospital, died on the morning of 11 January 2020 after a cardiac arrest at work in 2015 and more than four years confined to bed; his son, Ioan Bucuraș, announced the death.

### The case of Andrei Plăcintă

On the evening of 6 December 2010, on Strada Berzei in Bucharest, Andrei Răzvan Plăcintă struck his former girlfriend, Delia Iulia Harabulă, took her phone and damaged her car. When bystanders intervened he drove a Renault Laguna onto the pavement and, in repeated manoeuvres, drove over Nicolae Stan, who had been trying to stop him. Stan’s injuries required 40 to 45 days of care. Plăcintă was held from 8 December 2010 to 6 January 2011. In early June 2011 prosecutors charged him with attempted qualified murder, robbery, outrage against good morals and disturbing public order.

On 14 March 2012 the Bucharest Tribunal gave him three years, suspended. On 6 July 2012 the Bucharest Court of Appeal imposed six years for attempted murder and 11 months for outrage against good morals, and acquitted him of robbery. On 9 November 2012 the High Court of Cassation and Justice quashed that judgment and ordered a retrial: the appeal had been heard without his chosen lawyer, Viorel Roș, and the prosecutor agreed the defence right had not been secured. His mother, still a senator, said she trusted the courts. On 7 March 2013 the Court of Appeal, rehearing the case, sentenced him to four years and six months for attempted qualified murder and nine months for outrage against good morals, the heavier term to be served, and again acquitted him of robbery. On 4 November 2013 the High Court rejected his appeal as unfounded. The sentence was final. He entered Timișoara’s Popa Șapcă prison the next day. In spring 2016 the Timișoara District Court and the Timiș Tribunal granted conditional release, over prosecutors’ opposition, after he passed the two-thirds threshold of 1,094 days.

### Business commentary after politics

After leaving parliament she continued to speak as a clothing manufacturer in Focșani, in Vrancea County. In a June 2024 *Ziarul Financiar* interview, as Sorina Luminița Bucuraș of Sorste, she said Romania was no longer “the one that dresses Europe,” citing globalization and labour cost, and argued against a statutory minimum wage in garment making. She put Romania’s price per minute above Portugal’s, citing Romanian winters, the lack of motorways, heavier wage taxes and a 40-hour week against 45. She named Turkey, Tunisia, Albania and North Macedonia as the main rivals, with lower pay in Morocco and Tunisia. In Focșani, which she called the country’s largest clothing centre, net wages were 2,500 to 3,500 lei and the average age 44 or 45. Finance Ministry figures in the article put 2023 turnover at 27 million lei and net profit at 166,000 lei. The firm was already pricing spring–summer 2025, she said, and could not reopen those prices if tax, energy or the minimum wage moved.

In October 2025 the same series, calling her Sorina Luminița Plăcintă, quoted her on firms looking at Tunisia or Morocco because taxes and benefits, not the net wage, took about 65 to 75 percent of pay. Sorste had moved production to Tunisia in 2019 and closed it in the COVID-19 pandemic: Tunisia offered none of Romania’s support, and the rent was too high. Even good factories there, she said, priced labour at 80 to 85 percent of the Romanian rate, too small a gap to justify leaving. Orders had shrunk to runs of 30 to 200 pieces on 40 to 50 percent of the styles sampled. Output was all for export, and contract work was about 35 percent of the business. Ministry figures in the article showed 2024 revenue of 23 million lei, down almost 15 percent, and net profit of 66,000 lei, down 62 percent.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/sorina-luminita-placinta