Bolojan removes ONJN president without public explanation
Romania’s caretaker Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan dismissed Vlad Cristian Soare as president of the National Office for Gambling (ONJN) on August 21, 2026, ending a 16-month term that began in April 2025. Valentin Tomescu, until now head of ONJN’s South-East Territorial Service, has taken over the role.
Bolojan’s office gave no public reason for the removal. Soare said he learned of the decision without being told why.
“I was dismissed without being told the reasons,” Soare said.
Bolojan is running the government in a caretaker capacity. His cabinet lost a no-confidence vote in Romania’s Parliament on May 5, 2026, with 281 votes in favour, and has stayed in office since while parties negotiate a new government. The ONJN dismissal is one of the personnel decisions Bolojan has continued to make during that period.
An open DNA investigation inside the regulator
Soare linked his removal to a case opened this year by Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), which involves four ONJN employees from the regulator’s control and authorization departments. He described the case as the result of “serious violations incompatible with the direction I wanted” for the regulator. Neither Soare nor Bolojan’s office has said whether the DNA case factored into the dismissal decision.
The record Soare points to
In his response to the dismissal, Soare set out results from his 16 months running ONJN. The regulator blacklisted around 1,300 illegal gambling sites, carried out roughly 11,000 inspections, imposed close to €10 million in fines, confiscated more than 300 gaming machines and revoked over 70 licences. The number of licensed gaming machines in Romania fell from around 60,000 to 23,000 over the same period, and enrollment in the national self-exclusion register reached 60,000 people.
Soare also said ONJN blocked the prediction-market platforms Polymarket and Kalshi from operating in Romania, won two lawsuits against Polymarket, and rolled out QR codes on gaming machines during his term.
“I applied the law equally for everyone. Results show whom I protected,” Soare said.
Who is Valentin Tomescu
Before taking the ONJN presidency, Tomescu led the regulator’s South-East Territorial Service in Constanța and had previously headed its General Supervision and Control Directorate. His appointment was confirmed on August 22, a day after Soare’s dismissal.
Romanian outlets DNAMedia and Economica, cited by PS News, reported in February 2026 that Tomescu is a close associate of Alexandru Olea, described as the son-in-law of Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE) director Gabriel Vlase. The same reporting said Tomescu, from his post in Constanța, oversaw regulatory activity involving the Magnum casino network, a business Olea controls. Neither Bolojan’s office nor Tomescu has responded publicly to those reports since the appointment.
Tomescu takes over a regulator mid-transition
Tomescu inherits a regulator still working through the DNA case involving its own staff, an enforcement record built around machine confiscations and licence revocations, and a market that has already shrunk by more than half on device count since Soare’s arrival. He has not stated publicly whether he intends to continue the enforcement approach of his predecessor.
The dismissal leaves open questions the government has yet to answer: whether the DNA investigation reaches further up ONJN’s structure, whether the reported ties between Tomescu and the Magnum casino network raise a conflict of interest at the regulator, and how a caretaker administration justifies a leadership change at a body with an active anticorruption case attached to it. None of those questions has a public answer yet, and Soare has not said whether he intends to challenge his removal.
What happens next depends partly on Romania’s stalled government talks. Parliament removed Bolojan’s cabinet in May, and until a new coalition is confirmed, personnel decisions like the ONJN change are being made by a government that no longer holds a parliamentary majority. Operators and licence holders will be watching whether Tomescu keeps ONJN’s enforcement pace, including the inspection and licence-revocation rate Soare cited, once a permanent government takes office.
Source: Government of Romania; EVZ.ro
