This message is to give explanations about the “Conflict of Interest” (COI) question I asked you about.

My wife and I belong to the American Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences (ARA), a non-profit organization founded by a small number of intellectuals in California in 1975.

Since 1975, the ARA grew nicely as you can find out by taking a short look at our website www.AmericanRomanianAcademy.org/ . In the long history of our Academy, even from very beginning has been a similar case of husband and wife involved.

This summer took place in Chisinau, Rep. Moldova the 37th annual ARA Congress. On June the 8th, 2013 has been held the General Assembly (GA) elections, where, according to the ARA Bylaws a new ARA President, a new Executive Committee (ExC) and a new Board of Directors (BoD) have been elected by vote. Being required by other professional commitments in the very same day, neither the newly elected President nor the reelected Vice-President was physically present at these GA elections.

As you can read in the announcements link of our website, I was reelected as ARA Treasurer and my wife Dr. Oana Leonte was elected in the new ExC.

Couple of weeks ago, the elected President, Prof. Dr. Ruxandra Vidu arranged a Teleconference in order to discuss current issues of our organization. The Vice-President Prof. Dr. Marius Enachescu raised the question whether two family members could belong to the same ExC, due to a potential COI.

My wife and I brought two arguments: First, the ARA Bylaws does not specify anywhere about such a COI, and second, even before she was proposed to be elected within the Executive Committee, my wife told to the General Assembly about a potential COI, and all attendees of the GA, including the former ARA President agreed that there is not such a thing.

Conform the ARA Bylaws, the ARA General Assembly is the highest authority and the decision of GA cannot be reversed later. Nevertheless, according to the agenda of the following ARA meeting proposed by the ARA President, the issue of this potential COI should be submitted to the vote of remaining ExC members, because my wife and I cannot vote in this situation!

Now, your answer from www.Justanswer.com was also NEGATIVE. In a second ARA Teleconference we heard this issue surfacing again. When I sent by email YOUR answer to them, the ARA Vice-President did put together a bunch of regulations in the USA, which are related to the problem of COI, but, in our opinion does not address exactly our organization’s case.

For your information, here are in attachments those documents that I mentioned about.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration in this sensitive matter.

Sincerely,

Dr. Dinu Leonte

ARA Treasurer