Vlad-Cristian Soare, former President of Romania’s ONJN gambling office, has offered a much needed glimpse into his sudden departure from the regulator earlier this year.
In an interview with Romanian news outlet Adevărul, Soare touched on some intricate points, including the interests he might’ve affected during his 16-month tenure as the head of the ONJN.
Appointed on 17 April 2025, Soare took over a dishevelled gambling regulator who was in the midst of dealing with a PR crisis resulting from around €900m in missing taxes uncovered through an independent audit.
Soare was brought in to strengthen the regulator at a challenging time, but was later released from the Presidency “with no clear reason”, as he noted on social media at the time.
His interview with Adevărul is perhaps the most detailed one since his departure from the ONJN. And, as it turns out, he had some comments to raise about whether or not he infringed on anyone’s interests through his work.
“If you ask me whose interests I disrupted, I believe the answer lies precisely in these measures – specifically, in the interests of those who stood to gain from a lack of digitalisation, an absence of transparency, oversight vulnerable to external influence, legislative interpretations favouring certain operators, or the persistence of mechanisms that allowed for the evasion of tax obligations,” Soare told the newspaper.
Some of the measures Soare is hinting at, which he orchestrated during his mandate, include the implementation of mandatory QR codes and geolocation tags on gaming equipment to accurately identify the number of legal gaming machines in the country.
Another key development saw Soare push for the IT modernisation of not only the ONJN’s internal controls, but also for the creation of a brand new centralised self-exclusion registry that is easily accessible online and serves all corners of Romania.
“I am not claiming to have solved every problem at the ONJN,” Soare added. “However, I did amend the legislation, make key decisions, implement specific measures, and leave behind concrete projects—some of which were ready for immediate rollout.”
Addressing the scrutiny of ‘Conscious and Free’
Under Soare’s leadership, ONJN also launched the “Conscious and Free” programme, which set aside a total of €5m in grants through direct government funding to support problem gambling initiatives.
At the time, the programme came under suspicion of potential ties between some of the approved organisations and the gambling sector. Still, the recipients were not publicly named but were announced through designated codes.
Meanwhile, ONJN’s new leadership under current President Valentin-Ioan Tomescu recently addressed the programme, stating that a full inspection will be launched into it due to several questions being raised, including the transparency of the code process and the funding commitments.
Soare addressed all of that, adding: “The results were published using codes and titles – a procedural measure specifically designed to limit access to the project details by ONJN staff or management; the actual evaluation was carried out by independent experts.
“There was, in fact, an issue regarding the operationalisation of these funds – specifically concerning the inclusion of the appropriate expenditure categories within the budget structure.
“Discussions were held with the Ministry of Finance precisely to resolve this, and a legislative solution was formulated. I believe this distinction should have been highlighted more clearly in public communications: it is one thing to have a technical, legal, or budgetary issue that must be resolved prior to contracting, but it is quite another to create the impression that the program was launched without any financial foundation.”
With Soare now observing ONJN’s work from the sidelines, he had one clear message for the new management: “I ask those at the ONJN not to turn individuals affected by gambling addiction into collateral damage of leadership changes.
“Although I am no longer the president of the ONJN, I have a public responsibility to explain what was accomplished and why I believe the institution’s work should not be abandoned.”
