Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan said on Monday that whoever leads the government must ensure transparency and enforce strict oversight of public spending in order to prevent the misuse of public funds.

'Whoever becomes prime minister (...) if you do not ensure transparency, if you don't put things in order, if you don't eliminate the possibilities for wasting public money, no matter how much revenue you collect or how much you save, a significant share of this country's funds will end up in so-called black holes, and we will not solve our problems. This is not (...) about one government or another, or one political colour or another, but simply about governing honestly, governing for people, governing with integrity and telling the truth,' Bolojan said on private broadcaster Digi24.

He added that in all the institutions where he had identified problems related to public spending, 'there was someone backed by the PSD.'

'Clearly, everything that has been done (...) shedding light [on public spending], trying to set rules, no longer using the state budget as a piggy bank for underperforming administrations, increasing transparency - all this has caused discomfort. Because (...) wherever there are rotten apples in public institutions, where there have been problems, where things were not in order, there may have been cross-party or cross-institutional involvement, but there was a constant: wherever such problems existed, there was always someone supported by PSD. That is the reality,' Bolojan said. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: George Onea; EN - writing by: Simona Iacob)