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Sorina Bucuraș, better known as Sorina-Luminița Plăcintă (born Sorina Ștefan; February 6, 1965), is a Romanian engineer and politician. A member of the National Liberal Party and formerly of the Democratic Liberal Party (PD-L), she was a member of the Romanian Senate for Vrancea County from 2008 to 2012. In the Emil Boc cabinet, she was Minister of Youth and Sport from July to December 2009, and interim Minister-Delegate for Relations with Parliament from October to December 2009.

Biography

She was born in Focșani and graduated from the Textile Technology and Chemistry faculty of the Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iași in 1989. From that year until 1993, she worked as an engineer at a worsted wool spinning mill in Focșani. From 1993 to 1994, she was assistant manager of an import-export firm in Bucharest. She was then active at three textile firms in Focșani until November 2008: at Soreste, she was stockholder, administrator and board president from 1994; at Milcofil, later purchased by Soreste, she was board president from 1997; and at Artifex, a joint venture between Soreste and Akris, she was administrator and general director from 2005.

In 1997, Plăcintă joined the Democratic Party (PD; later evolved into the PD-L). At the 2008 election, she won a Senate seat, and became vice president of that chamber's agriculture, forestry and rural development committee. In July 2009, following the resignation of scandal-plagued minister Monica Iacob Ridzi, Plăcintă was given the Youth and Sport portfolio and sworn in the same day. Her appointment was criticised by Vrancea County Council and PSD chapter president Marian Oprișan, who noted her links to the ministry were as close as those between "an old woman and a machine gun", and who pointed out she had contributed hundreds of thousands of euros to her party. The following month, she announced plans to cut in half the number of positions at her ministry. In October 2009, she became interim Minister for Relations with Parliament following the resignation of her PSD cabinet colleagues, including Victor Ponta, the previous occupant of that ministry, holding the portfolio until December. Her ministerial term ended when she was not reappointed to a new cabinet under Boc at the end of 2009. Nearly a year later, she was elected a vice president of the Bucharest PD-L chapter. She resigned from the PD-L in June 2012, crossing to the PNL. She left the Senate at the end of 2012, having declined to run in that year's election.

She has one son from her first marriage, Andrei Plăcintă, who at one time lived in Montreux, Switzerland and was pastor of the First Church of Atheism, an organisation seeking to eliminate religious belief from the world. Plăcintă herself is the ktitorissa of two Romanian Orthodox churches. In 2012, her son was sentenced to six years' imprisonment for attempted manslaughter, theft and indecent exposure, charges that stemmed from an incident that took place in Bucharest two years earlier; the sentence was ultimately reduced to four and a half years. Her second husband was Stefan Sobota, her former business partner, who immigrated from Sweden in 1992; in 2010, she announced they would divorce. This had taken place by the following year, when she secretly married urologist Viorel Bucuraș, adopting his surname in 2012.

Notes

1. ^ (in Romanian) Profile at the Ministry of Youth and Sport site Archived 2009-07-07 at the Wayback Machine; accessed July 15, 2009
2. (in Romanian) Election results, alegeri.tv; accessed July 15, 2009
3. (in Romanian) "Sorina Plăcintă a depus jurământul în calitate de ministru al Tineretului și Sportului" ("Sorina Plăcintă Takes Oath as Youth and Sport Minister"), Mediafax, 15 July 2009; accessed July 15, 2009
4. (in Romanian) "Oprișan: Plăcintă are legătură cu tineretul și sportul cum are 'baba cu mitraliera'" ("Oprișan: Plăcintă's Links to Youth and Sport Are as Those of 'an Old Woman and a Machine Gun'"), Mediafax, 14 July 2009; accessed July 15, 2009
5. (in Romanian) "Şeful judeţului Vrancea: Plăcintă nici măcar nu și-a câștigat mandatul" ("Vrancea County Chief: Plăcintă Did Not Even Win Her Office"), Ziarul Financiar, 14 July 2009; accessed July 15, 2009
6. (in Romanian) "Sorina Plăcintă injumătățește organigrama MTS" ("Sorina Plăcintă Cuts in Half Ministry's Organisational Chart") Archived 2009-08-17 at the Wayback Machine, România liberă, 12 August 2009; accessed September 7, 2009
7. (in Romanian) Florina Zainescu, Lacrima Andreica and Adriana Duțulescu, "Guvernul, îngropat cu lăutari" ("The Government, Interred with Lăutari" Archived 2009-10-05 at the Wayback Machine, Jurnalul Național, 2 October 2009; accessed July 23, 2010
8. (in Romanian) Emil Boc II-III Government; accessed September 4, 2010
9. (in Romanian) Monica Iordache Apostol, "Guvernul Boc, zero barat" ("Boc Government, Total Zero") Archived 2010-09-03 at the Wayback Machine, Jurnalul Național, 31 August 2010; accessed September 4, 2010
10. (in Romanian) Cristina Iana, Alina Vasile, Valentina Deleanu, "Elena Udrea a fost aleasă preşedinte al PDL București: 'Eu vreau să scăpăm Bucureștiul de Sorin Oprescu'" ("Elena Udrea Elected President of Bucharest PDL: 'I Want Us to Get Bucharest Rid of Sorin Oprescu'", Adevărul, 21 November 2010; accessed November 21, 2010
11. (in Romanian) Ioana Oancea, "Senatorul Sorina Plăcintă a demisionat din PDL și se înscrie în PNL" ("Senator Sorina Plăcintă Resigns from PDL and Joins PNL", Adevărul, 13 June 2012; accessed June 13, 2012
12. (in Romanian) Andreea Udrea, "Sorina Plăcintă nu mai candidează pentru Parlament" ("Sorina Plăcintă No Longer Running for Parliament", Evenimentul Zilei, 19 September 2012; accessed April 24, 2013
13. (in Romanian) "Boc o cocea deja: Ministrul Plăcintă o înlocuiește pe Ridzi. De la Comisia de agricultură şi cea de Afaceri externe, la Sport" ("Boc Was Already Preparing Her: Minister Plăcintă Is Replacing Ridzi. From the Agriculture and Foreign Affairs Committees, to Sport"), Ziua, 14 July 2009; accessed July 16, 2009
14. (in Romanian) "Cum acoperă PDL scandalul Iacob Ridzi" ("How the PDL Is Covering Up the Iacob Ridzi Scandal'"), Ziua, 15 July 2009; accessed July 16, 2009
15. (in Romanian) Cornelia Drăghici, "Marți, Sorina Plăcintă se pregătea să sărbătorească Ziua Transmisioniștilor!" ("On Tuesday, Sorina Plăcintă Was Preparing to Celebrate Transmission Engineers' Day!") Archived 2009-09-19 at the Wayback Machine, Gardianul, 16 July 2009; accessed September 6, 2009
16. (in Romanian) "Andrei Plăcintă, fiul senatorului Sorina Plăcintă, condamnat la 6 ani de închisoare cu executare" ("Andrei Plăcintă, Son of Senator Sorina Plăcintă, Sentenced to 6 Years' Imprisonment"), Adevărul, 6 July 2012; accessed July 23, 2012
17. (in Romanian) Mihai Stoica, "Andrei Plăcintă, fiul fostei senatoare Sorina Plăcintă, va sta patru ani și șase luni după gratii" ("Andrei Plăcintă, Son of Former Senator Sorina Plăcintă, Will Spend Four Years and Six Months behind Bars"), Adevărul, 4 November 2013; accessed November 6, 2013
18. (in Romanian) "Oameni deosebiți în locuri deosebite" ("Special People in Special Places"), Dialog Textil, July 2002; accessed July 15, 2009 Archived September 28, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
19. (in Romanian) Iulia Creţu, "Sorina Plăcintă a confirmat divorţul de Stefan Sobota" ("Sorina Plăcintă Confirms Divorce from Stefan Sobota'"), Ziarul de Vrancea, 21 January 2010; accessed September 4, 2010
20. (in Romanian) Ștefan Borcea, "Senatorul de Vrancea Sorina Plăcintă s-a căsătorit în secret" ("Vrancea Senator Sorina Plăcintă Secretly Marries"), Adevărul, 9 September 2011; accessed July 23, 2012
21. (in Romanian) Ștefan Borcea, "Senatorul PNL Sorina Plăcintă și-a schimbat numele" ("PNL Senator Sorina Plăcintă Changes Name"), Adevărul, 23 July 2012; accessed July 23, 2012

External links

• (in Romanian) Official site
• (in Romanian) Profile at the Romanian Senate site

• Romanian engineers
• Romanian businesspeople
• Democratic Liberal Party (Romania) politicians
• National Liberal Party (Romania) politicians
• Members of the Senate of Romania
• Members of the Romanian Orthodox Church
• 21st-century Romanian women politicians
• 21st-century Romanian politicians
• People from Focșani
• 1965 births
• Living people
• Romanian women in business