in a nationalized house downtown Bucharest for the equivalent of US$19,000. A scandal followed, as the request to buy the house was approved by the Mayor's Office, at a time when Băsescu was mayor. He explained that he had filed an application in October 2002 with the specialized state agency (not to the Mayor's office, which was not the owner of the building) for the apartment to be sold to him on the basis of the Romanian Law 10 of 2001, which he claimed "gives priority to existing tenants to buy previously nationalized houses, no matter whether they already owned other houses," and that the price was calculated based on a 1995 law. However, the press noted that, according to the contract, the sale was based on Law 112 of 1995, and that Law 10/2001 had no provisions about selling anything. The 1995 law prevents, with the provisions of Art. 9, sale to tenants who already owned or sold a house after 1 January 1990. Băsescu already bought a villa near Bucharest in October 2002, which he donated to his daughter shortly after. Furthermore, the same law only gave the right to buy the nationalized houses to those who were tenants at the time of it came into force (i.e. the second half of 1996), while Băsescu had only lived in that house since August 2002. According to the press, these facts made it impossible for Băsescu to legally buy the apartment. When the scandal broke again in early 2005, Băsescu first stated that he would give up the apartment, but later changed his mind announcing that he would give it up only if the Prosecutor's Office decided he had broken the law. The prosecutors investigating the matter concluded that, according to the provisions of the law, Băsescu did not breach it when he bought the apartment. Leader of Justice and Truth Alliance (D.A.) In 2001, Băsescu was elected chairman of the Democratic Party (PD), defeating Petre Roman, who had previously led the party for nine years, after Roman only managed to get 3% of the vote at the 2000 presidential elections. At the time, the PD had a social-democrat ideology. That same year, Băsescu's party and Iliescu's PDSR both attempted to join the Socialist International. Băsescu tried to present his party as more democratically oriented, stating that the "PDSR is far from modern social-democracy". He also negotiated a merger