UPDATE Priest from Teleorman, arrested for allegedly stealing 4.9 million lei from the money received from the church budget

UPDATE 2 The Diocese of Alexandria and Teleormanu is releasing, through a press release, that, from an ecclesiastical administrative point of view, this priest has been suspended from the holy things, suspended and sent to the judgment of the Bishop’s Consistory.

“We are sorry that the servant of the Church is being investigated in a criminal case, we make sure that we will give all the support to the competent authorities to establish the truth and we repeat that such a case does not represent a model of priestly ministry”, added the quoted source.

UPDATE: The priest was placed under house arrest.

The original news: A priest from Teleorman was detained for 24 hours on Thursday and accused of stealing from the money received from the church budget, according to a press release from the county police. The case is handled by the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the Teleorman Court.

Priest Nicu Chiriță is in charge of the Parish of the Apostles Peter and Paul and the Parish of the Great Martyr Mina, both in Alexandria, according to G4Media sources.

The 62-year-old priest from Alexandria is accused of lying in documents under a private signature and embezzlement with extremely serious consequences, both in a continuous form.

The authorities claim that, between 2016 and 2022, the priest hid several documents to confirm sums of money received from local and national budgets as financial support for repair and construction work at the churches he serves in charge

The police also claim that the priest would have taken various amounts from the accounts of the two parishes, through withdrawals from ATMs and from the cashier of the banking unit, and that he would have made payments for the purchase of goods and services for personal interest. and for others, the total damage was more than 4.9 million lei.