Oana Țoiu, Romania's foreign minister, said on 28 September that Kimberly Guilfoyle's visit to Bucharest in March was "a visit within a private business event format, therefore outside any mandate of representation, negotiation or relation with Romanian state institutions". She said the United States is represented in Romania by its ambassador in Bucharest, Darryl Nirenberg. Țoiu said Romania gives priority to the Vertical Gas Corridor to reduce its dependence on Russian energy.
Footage filmed by the Bucharest photo agency Flashpaparazzi and published on 27 September shows Guilfoyle, the US ambassador to Greece, dining at the Isoletta restaurant in Bucharest on 31 March with Sorin Grindeanu, leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the then energy minister Bogdan Ivan of the PSD and Florin Vlădică, an adviser to President Nicușor Dan. Grindeanu confirmed the meeting and said it concerned Romania's transit role in the gas corridor. The PSD said in a statement that the other aspects reported about the dinner were "pure fabrications".
The Wall Street Journal reported on 25 September that Guilfoyle told a dinner of Greek and US officials in Athens in March, while discussing the impending collapse of Romania's government: "We can do that to any country we want. We can do that here." The account came from one person at the dinner and others told about it, and Jesse Binnall, her lawyer, disputed it. The same investigation reported that Christos Marafatsos, a registered lobbyist paid by the Greek construction group Aktor, accompanies Guilfoyle to meetings with foreign officials while she promotes US gas sold through Atlantic-SEE LNG Trade, a venture 60 per cent owned by Aktor.
The PSD left Bolojan's coalition on 25 April. Marian Neacșu, a former PSD deputy prime minister, announced a joint no-confidence motion with the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) on 27 April, and the two parties filed it on 28 April with the smaller PACE Întâi România group and 251 signatures, 28 days after the Bucharest dinner. The government fell on 5 May, when 281 deputies and senators voted against it.
The gas contract
Romgaz, the state-controlled gas producer, examined a proposal in December 2025 to buy US LNG for 20 years from Atlantic-SEE and declined to sign. Its analysis put the delivered cost at €33 to €42 a megawatt hour against European forward prices of €30 to €40 for 2030 to 2040 and estimated annual losses of €50 million to €310 million.
Bogdan Ivan wrote to President Dan and Prime Minister Bolojan on 16 January 2026 asking for an intergovernmental agreement with the United States on LNG purchases through the Romanian trader Nova Power & Gas. His letters sought an explicit negotiating mandate backed by the foreign and defence ministries and the SRI intelligence service, approval from the Supreme Council of National Defence and notification of the European Commission. They cited the need to avoid "the risk of a diplomatic blockade" with a strategic partner. At a teleconference with Ivan on 11 February the heads of Romgaz and the grid operator Transgaz both refused to take part. The presidency and the government held back his requests on price and economic grounds, according to people familiar with the matter, and no commercial offer with volumes or prices was tabled.
Ivan said on 27 September that he had asked Bolojan for an explicit mandate and received only "We'll see". He said the PSD had not needed anyone from the United States to tell it that Bolojan was "a catastrophe" and that Transgaz could earn €250 million a year from transit fees on the corridor.
Nova Power & Gas
Nova Power & Gas, a Cluj-based energy trader controlled by the brothers Teofil and Simion Mureșan, signed a cooperation agreement with Transgaz and Atlantic-SEE in November 2025 at an energy conference in Athens attended by Guilfoyle and two US cabinet secretaries. The agreement covers up to 1.4 million tonnes a year of US LNG. Nova Power & Gas is also the partner of the state nuclear operator Nuclearelectrica in the NuScale small modular reactor project at Doicești.
Bolojan's government ordered inspections at Nuclearelectrica over about one billion lei spent on the Doicești project, and Cosmin Ghiță, Nuclearelectrica's chief executive, resigned after the inspection. The Mureșan brothers bought the Doicești site for about €5 million in 2020 and sold it for about €24 million in 2025 to RoPower Nuclear, which Nova Power & Gas owns equally with Nuclearelectrica. A report by the prime minister's control body published on 20 September 2026 found the land overvalued and the project's estimated cost risen from $2.7 billion to $6.5 billion, and Nuclearelectrica's shareholders voted to send it to the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA). Nova Power & Gas denies causing any loss. The energy regulator ANRE fined the company 100 million lei for market manipulation in February 2024; the High Court annulled the fine on 28 May 2025, and ANRE's legal department referred the defeat to the DNA. Neither brother has been charged with any offence. Bolojan's government withheld the LNG mandate Ivan wanted and investigated the reactor spending, two state deals involving Nova Power & Gas, before the PSD brought it down. No family link between the Mureșan brothers and Siegfried Mureșan, the prime minister-designate, has been reported.
Bolojan's government also published a list of more than 1,400 companies holding grid connection permits with little or no activity. "In energy we are not dealing with an isolated problem, but with a blocking system tolerated for too long, which we are now cutting at the roots," Bolojan wrote on Facebook in April.
Who they are
Sorin Grindeanu
Sorin Grindeanu, 52, leads the PSD, Romania's largest centre-left party and a member of the Party of European Socialists, and has been speaker of the Chamber of Deputies since June 2025. He was prime minister from January to June 2017, when his own party expelled him and removed him with a no-confidence motion, and served as transport minister from 2021 to 2025. He has never been a suspect in an anti-corruption case; prosecutors questioned him as a witness in a railway case in 2023. Cristian Anton, his former chief of staff and head of the road authority ARR, was detained by the DNA on 1 April 2026, the day after the Guilfoyle dinner, on suspicion of bribery, influence peddling and organised crime over rigged driving tests; investigators found about €350,000 in cash at his homes. Grindeanu said anyone who breaks the law must answer for it.
Grindeanu visited Israel from 3 to 5 February 2026 and met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana. "Accelerated development of economic relations is the new target," he said. On Ukraine he demanded on 23 July 2026 that Romania's military aid be declassified: "I am the third man in the state. I don't know what is being given at this moment." After Russian drones entered Romanian airspace he attacked AUR's leaders on 27 July: "Did you see Simion say anything? Did they say anything about Russian sanctions?" He ruled out governing with AUR on 6 May, the day after the vote, and on 17 July said: "I don't exclude it. I have respect for voters," while setting conditions on AUR's line on Russian sanctions and Ukraine.
Bogdan Ivan
Bogdan Ivan, 35, a PSD deputy since 2020, was research minister from 2023, economy minister from December 2024 and energy minister from June 2025 until the PSD left government in April 2026. He met Ukraine's energy minister, Denys Shmyhal, at the border on 7 February 2026 and said that "regardless of borders, conflicts or times, people must have energy". On 27 September he said: "Russian gas you pay for not only with money but with blood." The treason complaint filed on 26 September is the only legal action against him.
Florin Vlădică
Florin Vlădică heads the Office for Integrated Information at the Romanian presidency, a post to which Bolojan appointed him on 18 March 2025 while serving as interim president. He was previously secretary of state in charge of the defence ministry's armaments department from March 2017, appointed under Grindeanu's government, until January 2018. The presidency has not said why he attended the dinner.
Marian Neacșu
Marian Neacșu, the PSD figure who announced the joint motion with AUR, received a final six-month suspended sentence from Romania's High Court in 2016 for conflict of interest after employing his daughter in his parliamentary office, and was later legally rehabilitated. The PSD proposed him as interior minister in June 2026 in a government led by Adrian Veștea, which failed its confirmation vote on 22 June with 189 votes against the 233 needed. He said of AUR in June: "We Romanians are all pro-European and pro-Western. At least that's what the statistics say."
George Simion and AUR
George Simion, 40, founded the Alliance for the Union of Romanians in 2019. The party campaigns for union with Moldova and sits with the European Conservatives and Reformists, of which Simion became a vice-president in January 2025. He won 40.96 per cent in the first round of the May 2025 presidential election and lost the second round to Nicușor Dan by 46.4 per cent to 53.6 per cent. AUR led a poll by INSCOP in early September 2026 with 39.7 per cent, ahead of the PSD on 18.7 per cent.
Simion attended Donald Trump's inauguration on 20 January 2025 as an ECR vice-president, spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2025 and said in April 2025 that AUR was "almost perfectly aligned ideologically with the MAGA movement". Two activists from College Republicans of America campaigned for him in Bucharest in May 2025. Viktor Orbán, Hungary's prime minister, endorsed Simion's "pro-Christian and anti-globalist" agenda on 9 May 2025, and AUR placed paid advertisements with the clip in Hungarian-majority counties, a year after Simion said the Hungarian minority party UDMR was "a hideous, chauvinistic creature".
Moldova renewed a five-year entry ban on Simion in 2024, citing "alleged ties with the Russian special services". A Moldovan court ruled against him on 10 April 2025 in a defamation suit he brought against the former Moldovan defence minister Anatol Șalaru, who had accused him of links to the FSB. Romania's prime minister at the time, Marcel Ciolacu, said in November 2024 that neither Moldova nor Ukraine had confirmed that Simion met Russian agents, and no Romanian authority has found such ties. Ukraine's SBU security service has banned Simion from entering the country, citing "systematic anti-Ukrainian activities" and a unionist ideology "that questions the legitimacy of Ukraine's state borders", and in January 2026 Ukraine banned the AUR deputy Petru Negrea.
Simion endorsed Călin Georgescu, the pro-Russian candidate whose first-round victory led Romania's Constitutional Court to annul the 2024 presidential election, and entered the 2025 race after Georgescu was barred. Georgescu is on trial for complicity in actions against the constitutional order; on 28 September 2026 he thanked Simion "for his integrity". On the war in Ukraine Simion said in May 2025: "Ukraine needs us, we don't need Ukraine." He said Romania should choose "neutrality, not escalation and not supplying weapons" and that its donation of a Patriot air defence system to Ukraine was "national treason". He also said: "It's a Russian war against Ukraine." All 55 AUR deputies voted on 19 February 2025 against the law allowing Romania's army to shoot down drones entering its airspace, which passed by 196 votes to 99.
Simion met Israel's ambassador, Reuven Azar, and the West Bank settler leader Yossi Dagan in August 2023 and backed Israeli settlements. The Israeli embassy said the meeting was "a chance" for AUR and "not a blank cheque".
Petrișor Peiu, AUR's leader in the Senate and its nominee for prime minister, is an economist who advised the prime ministers Radu Vasile and Adrian Năstase. He said on 22 September 2026 that AUR would talk to Grindeanu about a government "if he invites us".
What the records show
The letters, company decisions and dates place Nova Power & Gas, the PSD energy ministry and Atlantic-SEE on the side of a US LNG contract that Romgaz, Transgaz and Bolojan's government refused. They do not show a bribe, an instruction from the United States or any payment linked to the no-confidence vote. The PSD says the 31 March dinner covered only the gas corridor. Alexandru Dimitriu, a deputy from the Save Romania Union (USR), filed criminal complaints for treason against Grindeanu, Ivan and AUR leader George Simion on 26 September, the only legal action reported.
Nicușor Dan told a press conference in Croatia on 29 April, four days after the PSD left the government, that the Vertical Corridor had failed repeatedly because of high prices and that the United States had an interest in entering the European LNG market. Asked whether Romania would buy US gas or only carry it, he said Romania wanted a US presence in the country and an economic arrangement favourable to Romania. He said Black Sea production from Romgaz and OMV Petrom, due from 2027, would cover domestic demand at market prices.
Reactions
George Simion, the AUR leader, said he had not discussed the government's removal with Guilfoyle. "I know her and I believe I am a good friend of the ambassador," he said. Petrișor Peiu, an AUR senator, said Guilfoyle "wrote not a single word" of the motion. Dominic Fritz, the USR leader, said in a video: "Mr Grindeanu, Mr Simion, is it true that you brought down the government on foreign orders?" Bolojan, caretaker prime minister since 5 May, has not commented on the dinner.
Siegfried Mureșan, a National Liberal Party member of the European Parliament, was designated prime minister by Dan on 17 September with the backing of the Liberals, USR and the Hungarian party UDMR, which hold about 170 of the 233 votes needed. He said the confirmation vote was the PSD's best opportunity to prove it had not been motivated by foreign interests. The PSD decided unanimously on 28 September not to back his government, and AUR said its members would stay away from the vote. "We will not vote a puppet government," Simion said.
Footage filmed by the Bucharest photo agency Flashpaparazzi and published on 27 September shows Guilfoyle, the US ambassador to Greece, dining at the Isoletta restaurant in Bucharest on 31 March with Sorin Grindeanu, leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the then energy minister Bogdan Ivan of the PSD and Florin Vlădică, an adviser to President Nicușor Dan. Grindeanu confirmed the meeting and said it concerned Romania's transit role in the gas corridor. The PSD said in a statement that the other aspects reported about the dinner were "pure fabrications".
The Wall Street Journal reported on 25 September that Guilfoyle told a dinner of Greek and US officials in Athens in March, while discussing the impending collapse of Romania's government: "We can do that to any country we want. We can do that here." The account came from one person at the dinner and others told about it, and Jesse Binnall, her lawyer, disputed it. The same investigation reported that Christos Marafatsos, a registered lobbyist paid by the Greek construction group Aktor, accompanies Guilfoyle to meetings with foreign officials while she promotes US gas sold through Atlantic-SEE LNG Trade, a venture 60 per cent owned by Aktor.
The PSD left Bolojan's coalition on 25 April. Marian Neacșu, a former PSD deputy prime minister, announced a joint no-confidence motion with the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) on 27 April, and the two parties filed it on 28 April with the smaller PACE Întâi România group and 251 signatures, 28 days after the Bucharest dinner. The government fell on 5 May, when 281 deputies and senators voted against it.
The gas contract
Romgaz, the state-controlled gas producer, examined a proposal in December 2025 to buy US LNG for 20 years from Atlantic-SEE and declined to sign. Its analysis put the delivered cost at €33 to €42 a megawatt hour against European forward prices of €30 to €40 for 2030 to 2040 and estimated annual losses of €50 million to €310 million.
Bogdan Ivan wrote to President Dan and Prime Minister Bolojan on 16 January 2026 asking for an intergovernmental agreement with the United States on LNG purchases through the Romanian trader Nova Power & Gas. His letters sought an explicit negotiating mandate backed by the foreign and defence ministries and the SRI intelligence service, approval from the Supreme Council of National Defence and notification of the European Commission. They cited the need to avoid "the risk of a diplomatic blockade" with a strategic partner. At a teleconference with Ivan on 11 February the heads of Romgaz and the grid operator Transgaz both refused to take part. The presidency and the government held back his requests on price and economic grounds, according to people familiar with the matter, and no commercial offer with volumes or prices was tabled.
Ivan said on 27 September that he had asked Bolojan for an explicit mandate and received only "We'll see". He said the PSD had not needed anyone from the United States to tell it that Bolojan was "a catastrophe" and that Transgaz could earn €250 million a year from transit fees on the corridor.
Nova Power & Gas
Nova Power & Gas, a Cluj-based energy trader controlled by the brothers Teofil and Simion Mureșan, signed a cooperation agreement with Transgaz and Atlantic-SEE in November 2025 at an energy conference in Athens attended by Guilfoyle and two US cabinet secretaries. The agreement covers up to 1.4 million tonnes a year of US LNG. Nova Power & Gas is also the partner of the state nuclear operator Nuclearelectrica in the NuScale small modular reactor project at Doicești.
Bolojan's government ordered inspections at Nuclearelectrica over about one billion lei spent on the Doicești project, and Cosmin Ghiță, Nuclearelectrica's chief executive, resigned after the inspection. Bolojan's government withheld the LNG mandate Ivan wanted and investigated the reactor spending, two state deals involving Nova Power & Gas, before the PSD brought it down. No family link between the Mureșan brothers and Siegfried Mureșan, the prime minister-designate, has been reported.
Bolojan's government also published a list of more than 1,400 companies holding grid connection permits with little or no activity. "In energy we are not dealing with an isolated problem, but with a blocking system tolerated for too long, which we are now cutting at the roots," Bolojan wrote on Facebook in April.
What the records show
The letters, company decisions and dates place Nova Power & Gas, the PSD energy ministry and Atlantic-SEE on the side of a US LNG contract that Romgaz, Transgaz and Bolojan's government refused. They do not show a bribe, an instruction from the United States or any payment linked to the no-confidence vote. The PSD says the 31 March dinner covered only the gas corridor. Alexandru Dimitriu, a deputy from the Save Romania Union (USR), filed criminal complaints for treason against Grindeanu, Ivan and AUR leader George Simion on 26 September, the only legal action reported.
Nicușor Dan told a press conference in Croatia on 29 April, four days after the PSD left the government, that the Vertical Corridor had failed repeatedly because of high prices and that the United States had an interest in entering the European LNG market. Asked whether Romania would buy US gas or only carry it, he said Romania wanted a US presence in the country and an economic arrangement favourable to Romania. He said Black Sea production from Romgaz and OMV Petrom, due from 2027, would cover domestic demand at market prices.
Reactions
George Simion, the AUR leader, said he had not discussed the government's removal with Guilfoyle. "I know her and I believe I am a good friend of the ambassador," he said. Petrișor Peiu, an AUR senator, said Guilfoyle "wrote not a single word" of the motion. Dominic Fritz, the USR leader, said in a video: "Mr Grindeanu, Mr Simion, is it true that you brought down the government on foreign orders?" Bolojan, caretaker prime minister since 5 May, has not commented on the dinner.
Siegfried Mureșan, a National Liberal Party member of the European Parliament, was designated prime minister by Dan on 17 September with the backing of the Liberals, USR and the Hungarian party UDMR, which hold about 170 of the 233 votes needed. He said the confirmation vote was the PSD's best opportunity to prove it had not been motivated by foreign interests. Parliament is expected to vote this week.
Related: Trump's ambassador to Greece told Greek officials the US could topple allied governments if it wants
