Former ONJN president Soare defends his record and urges regulator not to drop problem gambling work

Vlad-Cristian Soare, the former president of Romania's gambling regulator ONJN, has given his most detailed account so far of his abrupt exit from the office. In an interview with the Romanian outlet Adevărul, he discussed whose interests he may have affected during his 16-month tenure.

Soare was appointed on 17 April 2025, when the regulator was dealing with a public relations crisis after an independent audit uncovered around €900m in missing taxes. He later said on social media that he had been released from the presidency with no clear reason.

Asked which interests he disrupted, Soare pointed to his measures and to those who stood to benefit from a lack of digitalisation, an absence of transparency, oversight open to external influence, legislative interpretations favouring certain operators, or mechanisms that allowed tax obligations to be evaded. Among the steps he led were mandatory QR codes and geolocation tags on gaming equipment, intended to establish the number of legal machines in the country. He also pushed for IT modernisation of the ONJN's internal controls and for a new centralised online self-exclusion registry covering all of Romania. He said he had not solved every problem, but had amended legislation, taken key decisions and left concrete projects, some ready for immediate rollout.

The interview also covered the 'Conscious and Free' programme, launched under his leadership, which set aside €5m in direct government funding for problem gambling initiatives. The programme drew suspicion over possible links between some approved organisations and the gambling sector, and recipients were announced by codes rather than names. The ONJN's current president, Valentin-Ioan Tomescu, has said a full inspection will be launched into the programme because of questions over the transparency of the code process and funding commitments.

Soare said the results were published with codes and titles specifically to limit access to project details by ONJN staff or management, and that independent experts carried out the evaluation. He acknowledged an issue with operationalising the funds, concerning the inclusion of the right expenditure categories in the budget structure. He said talks were held with the Ministry of Finance and a legislative solution was drafted. In his view, a technical or budgetary issue to be resolved before contracting should not be presented as the programme having launched without financial foundation.

Soare closed with a message to the new management, asking them not to turn people affected by gambling addiction into collateral damage of leadership changes. He said he retains a public responsibility to explain what was achieved and why the institution's work should not be abandoned.