Romania's ruling party strongman begins jail sentence

Romania's ruling party strongman Liviu Dragnea was jailed on Monday, Romanian media reported, hours after his appeal against a corruption conviction failed.

Dragnea, 56, was seen being driven in a police car into the Rahova prison on the outskirts of Bucharest, in images carried live on Romanian television late on Monday afternoon.

Just hours earlier a court had confirmed his original three-and-a-half-year jail sentence.

The verdict will almost certainly remove from public life a man who was widely seen as the puppet master behind the Social Democrats (PSD) and the government they lead.

Dragnea was also a key figure in his party's push for controversial judicial reforms which have led to clashes with Brussels and have overshadowed Romania's first-ever EU presidency.

But he was unsuccessful in his bid to overturn a conviction he received last year for using his influence to procure fake public jobs for two women who were actually working for the Social Democrats (PSD) at the time.

Despite the PSD's election victory in 2016, Dragnea's deep-seated ambition to become prime minister was thwarted because of a previous suspended jail sentence for electoral fraud.

His incarceration also comes on the heels of a stinging defeat for the PSD in Sunday's European parliament elections.

A grim-faced Dragnea appeared in front of the cameras on Sunday night to say the PSD had faced a "storm of hatred" in the election results, with the party falling 12 points from its score in 2014 to 25.8 per cent.

Centre-right and liberal opponents, by contrast, racked up almost 50 percent between them.

Young people and city-dwellers turned out in force to express their frustration with the government, with turnout nudging 50 per cent.

Florentin Negrutiu, editorial writer for the Digi24 site, said of Monday's court verdict: "This is a victory for the judicial system after two and a half years in which Dragnea has tried to employ all means to stop it working."