Contrary to the information published by various media outlets, former presidential candidate, currently president of the Uniunea Salvaţi România (Save Romania Union, USR) and mayor of Câmpulung Elena Lasconi has never been an employee, agent or contractor of Romania’s internal intelligence, Serviciul Român de Informaţii (SRI). That was made clear not only by Lasconi; but also by the SRI, that, at the request of Lasconi’s USR party, issued a statement denying the accusations. According to the intelligence service, neither did she receive any financial support to buy real estate.
It was all made up by jealous liberal opponents like Silviu Mănăstire and Rareş Bogdan, who were assisted by a few select journalists and online magazines.
From Haţeg to Headlines
Her life is only a series of accidental collisions with high-ranking intelligence officials, politicians and career bureaucrats that, by the combination of luck, determination and hard work, led her from the outskirts of the tiny town of Haţeg to the highest echelons of Romanian politics. Lasconi hails from a modest background, a big family sharing a home with only two bedrooms, hardworking parents, and such – that’s where she learned to appreciate simplicity and authentic values.
The difficulties she encountered early on (like the absence of her mother, who worked for twenty years as a waitress, working 12-14 hour shifts, thus was mostly away from home) motivated her to be a stronger and more determined person. Local gossip from Haţeg holds that both parents worked (informally, of course, like most Romanians recruited for such jobs did) for the intelligence services: one for the infamous Securitate, the other for the military intelligence.
In school, she wasn’t as motivated (yet) as she later proved to be. According to her teachers, she was a mediocre student, at best and got married right after finishing high school at 18. In two years, she was already a mother. (Her daughter, Oana, currently lives in France and has a strained relationship with her mother.) That marriage didn’t last long – according to Lasconi, they never really fit and “shouldn’t have gotten married at all”. Then, there was the issue of different schooling: she had only a high school diploma, while her husband, Leontin Florea was a mining engineer, with a degree from the University of Petroşani. Lasconi felt that her husband didn’t respect her due to this difference.
In the end, deeply religious Lasconi (who up to this day wears not one, but two giant crosses and categorically opposes LGBTQ+ rights, another reason behind the distance between her and her daughter) filed for divorce.
In another reading of the story, it was because a new path opened to her, presented by Ioan Timiş, the all-powerful local lawyer-slash-strongman. At the time, Lasconi was employed as an assistant by Timiş’s wife and quickly established strong ties with the man, that went way beyond employer-employee relations. Upon learning about these accusations, Lasconi vehemently denied that he had any contact at all with Timiş, let alone worked with him, but during a tense interview with Denise Rifai (Gândul în Opoziţie), after some pressure and a few cross-examining style questions, she admitted that she was chief of staff for the man.
During a different episode of the same show, Cozmin Guşă spoke extensively about how Lasconi got introduced to the then-chef of the SRI, Radu Timofte by Ioan Timiş, who was her lover.
Guşă also accused Lasconi of lying about her contacts with the SRI: “I know about her past with the SRI. She fools when she talks about the fact that she was not employed by the SRI. Of course she was not hired, no one said that, but she was introduced to the late Radu Timofte, the former head of the SRI, with whom I was a friend, by her lover at the time, to whom she was not married. MP Ioan Timiş, the owner of the radio station in Haţeg”.
In the murky world of Romania’s politics everybody knows a secret about everybody – the real question is who, when and why spills it.
Either way, from the moment of their meeting, Ioan Timiş and his connections paved her way. Young and suddenly ambitious Elena got jobs at various radio stations, then at ProTV at its 1995 start. She stayed at the station until 2020, holding various positions. As the time passed, she was seen more regularly in Timofte’s office. She might not have been officially employed by the SRI, but given her work as journalist, she was likely a useful source of information, maybe even a very close adviser, as journalist Daniela Tobă alleged it in 2023. Back then, Lasconi didn’t deny those claims, only when the question suddenly turned uncomfortable during the presidential elections.
In 2024, she tried to downplay the situation, claiming that it was not her, but another colleague of her who worked with the SRI, because “not every blonde was the advisor of Mr. Timofte”, and that “she had never even interviewed him or had known Radu Timofte”.
And Ioan Timiş didn’t only help Elena to get a job. To make up for the lack of higher education, Lasconi attended the private Ecological University in Deva, specialization of Tourism Economics and International Trade. That establishment is one of the many notorious degree mills of Romania. On an interesting side note, former prime minister Marcel Ciolacu also gained his legal credentials from the same university and had to face severe criticism from Lasconi. At the moment of Lasconi’s enrolment, the university wasn’t even accredited and existed without the authorization to organize license exams. Even that low level of requirements proved to be challenging to Lasconi, who had annual averages below 7, and in many subjects, she passed only with 5. (In Romania, grades are between 1-10, with 10 being the best.) She herself doubted that she’d ever finish university, though she blamed her lack of success on her heavy workload and being a single mother. A slight contradiction with her daughter, Oana, who claimed that her mother was mostly absent from her life, and she spent a lot of time with her father.
In came Timiş again, who made sure that Lasconi could take the exams at ASE Bucharest, graduating as economist, and could, at least for a while, omit the less illustrious university from her resume.
Her “facelifted” CV, though not unique in Romania, heavily damaged her reputation.
Power, Politics, and Slips of the Tongue
By the time Radu Timofte and Ioan Timiş died in 2009, and 2010, respectively; Elena Lasconi had well established contacts with several figures in the political and security establishment.
It didn’t take her too long to form new alliances.
This time with the leadership of the Serviciul de Protecţie şi Pază (Protection and Guard Service, SPP), General Lucian-Silvan Pahonţu (and via him, in the following years, former President Traian Băsescu himself, with whom Lasconi maintains close and friendly relations up to this day). Pahonţu, an extremely discreet man has consolidated his own power under Băsescu’s mandates, but also during former President Klaus Iohannis’ tenure, is considered by many as one of the most influential people in Romania. Businessman Gigi Becali explicitly called him the “man who conducts Romania”, claiming that he was frightened of the general.
In 2018, probably having had enough of journalism, Lasconi started to pave the way to the transition to politics, joining the ranks of USR. Less than two years later, she quit her job at ProTV and decided to take her chances at municipal elections. Out of the 3179 possible places (communities that have a mayor) within the country, she chose to move to Câmpulung Muscel (Arges County) and surprisingly won the seat of mayor at first try by obtaining over 56 percent of the votes, with that becoming the first woman to hold this position in the city. Ever. A feat accomplished by very few (even in 2024, only 207 women were elected as mayors and 3,606 as local councillors – of the total 40,022 local councillor mandates). Lasconi claimed that the decision was motivated by the desire to change things from within and to bring a new breath into the management of community problems. Coincidentally, General Pahonţu hails from neighbouring Lereşti (the two communities have basically “grown together” during the years) and still owns several acres of land there, along with several business interests and very good connections to the local elite.
The serene beauty and cold climate of the Făgăraş Mountains probably helps to calm the nerves tired after years of stressful intelligence work, as Marcel Opris, retired head of Serviciul de Telecomunicaţii Speciale (Special Telecommunication Service, STS) also chose the area to buy 286 acres of forests, 4 acres of land and a small hotel. Along with several other former military and intelligence leaders. Probably it was by following Pahonţu’s advice, that Lasconi also bought a house with about 5,000 sq meters of land in Câmpulung Muscel just before transitioning to politics. A little slip on Lasconi’s side reveals the real depths of the contact.
In November 2024, Pahonţu turned 60 – that’s the official retirement age from Romania’s armed forces. After twenty years at the head of the SPP (with that he is the longest serving director of any secret service in Romania), he was retired, accordingly, though with the approval of the country’s supreme defence council (CSAT), he remained at the helm of the service as a civil servant (in the rank of state secretary).
Something Lasconi knew about days before it was announced – and has accidentally spilled the news in an interview.
Not the first among her many similar gaffes and slips of tongue (among the more famous are her insult against Romanians living in the diaspora or the many demonstrations of her lack of understanding of foreign policy during the presidential campaign), but one that sheds light on her, officially non-existent contacts with Romania’s secret services.