Ion Cristoiu (; born November 16, 1948, Găgești,

Vrancea County Vrancea () is a county (județ) in Romania, with its seat at Focșani. It is mostly in the historical region of Moldavia but the southern part, below the Milcov River, is in Muntenia. Demographics In 2011, it had a population of 340,310 and a ...

) is a

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...

n journalist and a controversial figure in the Romanian public due to his involvement as informant at

Securitate The Securitate (, Romanian for ''security'') was the popular term for the Departamentul Securității Statului (Department of State Security), the secret police agency of the Socialist Republic of Romania. Previously, before the communist regime ...

. He was

editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...

of the daily ''

Evenimentul Zilei ''Evenimentul Zilei'' is a formerly physical and now exclusively online newspaper in Romania. Its name means "today's even (news)". History and profile ''Evenimentul Zilei'' was founded by Ion Cristoiu, Cornel Nistorescu and Mihai Cârciog, and ...

'' during its heyday in the 1990s, when the average daily circulation topped 600,000, making it the most read newspaper in Romania, after “Romania Libera” (1 ml)Patrick H. O'Neil, ''Post-communism and the media in Eastern Europe'',

Routledge Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law ...

, 1997, , p. 109 and one of the most read in Eastern Europe as well. He also founded or played a major role at a number of the weekly publications during that era: ''

Expres The EXtreme PREcision Spectrograph (EXPRES) is an optical fiber fed echelle instrument designed and built at the Yale Exoplanet Laboratory to be installed on the 4.3-meter Lowell Discovery Telescope operated by Lowell Observatory. It has a goal t ...

'', '' Expres Magazin'', and ''

Zig-Zag A zigzag is a pattern made up of small corners at variable angles, though constant within the zigzag, tracing a path between two parallel lines; it can be described as both jagged and fairly regular. In geometry, this pattern is described as a ...

''. All these publications were highly critical of president

Ion Iliescu Ion Iliescu (; born 3 March 1930) is a Romanian politician and engineer who served as President of Romania from 1989 until 1996 and from 2000 until 2004. Between 1996 and 2000 and also from 2004 to 2008, the year in which he retired, Iliescu ...

. He was the anchor for the TV talk-show "Ultimul cuvant" (The Last Word) (http://www.b1.ro/emisiuni/read/ultimul-cuvant.html) for the Romanian private TV station B1TV.

Collaboration with the Security - code name "Coroiu"

Corneliu Vadim Tudor in 2008 reported publicly, that Mr. Ion Cristoiu "was more than the caster, he was a source", the senator declares that Ion Cristoiu snitched on him to the Securitate ( Communist Romania's secret police) under the code name "Coroiu". Vadim said that this results from a tab of his scurity file at the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives. Mădălin Hodor, a Romanian historian and researcher, gave an interview to Newsweek Romania magazine in 2018, in which he spoke about the fact that the journalist is mentioned, in documents from the archives of the former Securitate, as the "Coroiu" source.
According to The National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives
Ion Cristoiu appears in the database both in the index of collaborators, in the SIE file (Foreign Intelligence Service Romania) 41448, and in the Index of follow-ups, twice, as a writer, with a conspiratorial name TO “Coroiu”, 1987, and as deputy editor-in-chief of "Scânteia Tineretului", for the attention of SMB (Bucharest City Security), 1983, 1984 The historian

Marius Oprea Marius Oprea (; born 1964) is a Romanian historian (specialized in recent history), poet and essayist. Born in Târgovişte, he studied history at the University of Bucharest and he has a PhD with a thesis on the role and evolution of the Co ...

confirmed the authenticity of the list published in Revista 22, but drew attention to the fact that the respective document represented a simple work list of the Securitate, which means that not all those who appear there were actually collaborators.

References

People from Vrancea County Romanian magazine editors Romanian magazine founders Romanian newspaper editors Romanian newspaper founders 1948 births Living people {{Romania-journalist-stub