Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, ordered Nicușor Dan to arrest Călin Georgescu because the latter poses a real threat to the Zionist influence in Romania, according to nationalist Orthodox propaganda.
NEWS: “The degenerate Nicușor Dan met Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, in New York during his visit to the UN General Assembly. Once again, they discussed the same ways of silencing us, using the Zionist scam as cover while they’re plundering our country and trampling on us. […]”
“All these issues are connected to the cases against Mr. Călin Georgescu, our president-elect. Nicușor Dan was told in New York to speed up the removal of the Călin Georgescu phenomenon from public life. It was deemed to have grown too large, and the president-elect must be convicted so that he cannot run in a future election. But they have shot themselves in the foot: antisemitism will spread more than ever, and the country will rid itself forever of the Jewish scourge that hates Christ!”
NARRATIVE: Jews ordered Călin Georgescu’s arrest.
PURPOSE: To undermine public trust in the authorities, to promote conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic narratives, and provoke and intensify social tensions.
A false narrative built on conspiracy theories and Nazi-style anti-Semitic propaganda
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: This false narrative follows a pattern familiar from anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and far-right rhetoric dating back to the interwar period, including Nazi and Romanian Legionary propaganda: a government supposedly under the influence of an international Jewish network carries out its orders to persecute patriots. The story links two unrelated events that took place at roughly the same time: Călin Georgescu’s detention and subsequent placement under judicial supervision, and the Romanian president’s trip to the United States to attend the UN General Assembly. According to the claim, Jews in America asked Nicușor Dan to remove Călin Georgescu, from New York.
In addition to attending the UN General Assembly, Nicușor Dan’s official agenda during his visit to the United States included a range of other events and meetings with officials from other countries, representatives of the American business community, experts, analysts and members of the Romanian community. The agenda also included a meeting with Ronald S. Lauder, an influential American billionaire, Republican and associate of President Donald Trump. Lauder is also president of the World Jewish Congress, and it was in that capacity that he met the Romanian president. The meeting was listed on Nicușor Dan’s public schedule. The World Jewish Congress is an international federation of organizations representing Jewish communities around the world. It has held consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council since 1947. It is therefore a federation that has maintained ties with various governments for decades, both directly and through its member organizations, and is officially recognized by the UN.
It is also worth noting that the World Jewish Congress and its member organizations have long been targets of conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic propaganda. In the case of the World Jewish Congress, Nazi Germany launched a propaganda campaign against it soon after the organization was founded in 1936.
The case was opened more than two years before Nicușor Dan became president
The criminal case concerning an alleged fraud involving more than one million euros stems from events and complaints that long predate both Nicușor Dan’s presidency and his meeting with Ronald Lauder.
According to the criminal complaint and court documents later cited by the press, businessman Răzvan Leu was allegedly defrauded by a group said to include Călin Georgescu as early as 2021, when he transferred more than one million euros to a bank in Switzerland. A complaint concerning the alleged fraud was filed in January 2024. On 31 January 2024, Leu filed a further complaint with Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) against the people he believed were involved, including Georgescu. The investigation continued throughout 2024. On 27 May, Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) registered a criminal complaint filed by Real Concrete Land, a company in which Leu is the majority shareholder and from whose accounts the payments had been made. The complaint named Georgescu and several others. Three days later, DIICOT opened an in rem criminal investigation into the formation of an organized crime group and fraud causing particularly serious losses. DIICOT questioned Leu, the complainant, on 18 November 2024.
On 17 December 2024, DIICOT took over an older case from the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the Bucharest Tribunal and merged it with its own case, bringing the investigation under DIICOT’s authority. On 3 February 2025, DIICOT expanded the investigation following a new complaint from businessman Ioan Niculae. He alleged that he had transferred 450,000 Euro to secure 200 million Euro in financing, which never materialized. Another complaint against the same people was filed on 6 February and joined to the existing case. In February 2025, prosecutors obtained a technical surveillance warrant and began recording audio and video inside the car used by Ionel Rusen.
The case was therefore under investigation before the annulled 2024 presidential election and, more significantly, before Nicușor Dan was elected and took office as Romania’s president. He formally became head of state on 26 May 2025, when he was sworn in before Parliament and took over from interim president Ilie Bolojan. This timeline contradicts the claim that the 2026 meeting between Nicușor Dan and Ronald Lauder prompted the investigation into the alleged fraud. Whatever the two men discussed, their meeting cannot explain how the case against Georgescu began: judicial proceedings had been underway long before Nicușor Dan became president.
Asked by journalists in New York about Călin Georgescu’s detention by DIICOT prosecutors, President Nicușor Dan invoked the constitutional principle of separation of powers. He stressed that establishing the facts was solely the prosecutors’ responsibility and called for the presumption of innocence to be respected. Dan also expressed “understanding and sympathy” for Georgescu’s supporters, acknowledging that longstanding public distrust of the justice system could lead people to mistake a legitimate legal action for a “set-up.”
In short, the slow pace of the investigation may be open to debate, but it offers no evidence that Ronald Lauder asked Nicușor Dan in 2026 to “eliminate” Georgescu through a case that had begun in 2024.
Călin Georgescu, an admirer of anti-Semite Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and war criminal Ion Antonescu
CONTEXT: Antisemitism is increasingly widespread in Romania. Over the years, Veridica has debunked numerous false claims targeting Jews, who have been accused of everything from causing floods in Romania to developing artificial intelligence to censor online content.
Since the early 1990s, various groups in Romania have waged a sustained campaign to rehabilitate the Legionary movement and the anti-Semitic ideas it promoted. Anti-Semitic rhetoric was also advanced in extremist politics, represented for years by Corneliu Vadim Tudor and the Greater Romania Party. Such themes later appeared in the rhetoric of politicians and influencers, including figures associated with the sovereignist movement.
Social media has provided fertile ground for the spread of anti-Semitic rhetoric. It has also intensified among some on the far left in the context of recent conflicts involving Israel in the Middle East, particularly Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed, prompting accusations of war crimes and even genocide.
The opposition of parties in the sovereignist camp to the recent adoption of a law aimed at combating extremism is another sign of the appeal of extremist ideas within that movement. They portray the law as a threat to freedom of expression and as a political tool for intimidation that threatens Christian national identity.
Călin Georgescu, the “victim” in this narrative, has made no secret of his admiration for Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the founder of the Legionary movement and a notorious anti-Semite, and for Marshal Ion Antonescu, a war criminal under whose leadership Romania participated in the Holocaust. In an ironic twist, within the tangled world of sovereignist politics, Georgescu himself has been accused of being a Mossad agent.
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