Appearing thinner and his hair whiter than in his previous photos, former Romanian diplomat Silviu Ionescu, who is involved in a hit-and-run case last Dec 15 which left one man dead, was captured on video leaving a Bucharest court house in handcuffs.

STOMPer Pal came across the video on the Internet and sent it to STOMP.

According to The Sunday Times report (May 9), the Bucharest court has placed Ionescu under preventive arrest for 29 days in connection to the hit-and-run case.

He had been taken in for questioning by prosecuters six hours earlier.

The 50-year-old Ionescu is being investigated for manslaughter, leaving the scene of an accident and making false statements.

He is alleged to have knocked down three pedestrians on Dec 15 last year while driving a car belonging to the Romanian embassy.

One of the victims died while the other two were injured.

AFP prosecutors said that Ionescu, who flew back to Romania after the accident, "has tried to influence witnesses' depositions and asked an employee to...erase data on his computer".

However, his lawyer claimed that Ionescu merely asked the driver of the Romanian Embassy in Singapore to grant him access to embassy's computer, where the records of the embassy car's movements were stored, to erase only personal information.

She said he did not try to modify the dates in the computer concerning the hours and the routes of the embassy cars.

Lawyers representing the victims, however, said that the preventive arrest has not much effect unless Ionescu is charged in Singapore, but they said that some development is better than none.