Sorina-Luminița Plăcintă

Sorina Bucuraș, better known asSorina-Luminița Plăcintă(bornSorina Ștefan; February 6, 1965), is aRomanianengineer and politician. A member of theNational Liberal Partyand formerly of theDemocratic Liberal Party(PD-L), she was a member of theRomanian SenateforVrancea Countyfrom 2008 to 2012. In theEmil Boccabinet, she wasMinister of Youth and Sportfrom July to December 2009, and interimMinister-Delegate for Relations with Parliamentfrom October to December 2009.
She was born inFocșaniand graduated from the Textile Technology and Chemistry faculty of theGheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iașiin 1989. From that year until 1993, she worked as an engineer at aworstedwool spinning mill in Focșani. From 1993 to 1994, she was assistant manager of an import-export firm inBucharest. 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 andAkris, she was administrator and general director from 2005.
In 1997, Plăcintă joined the Democratic Party (PD; later evolved into the PD-L). At the2008 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 ministerMonica Iacob Ridzi, Plăcintă was given the Youth and Sport portfolio and sworn in the same day.Her appointment was criticised byVrancea CountyCouncil andPSDchapter presidentMarian 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 ofeurosto 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, includingVictor 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 inthat year's election.
She has one son from her first marriage, Andrei Plăcintă, who at one time lived inMontreux,Switzerlandand was pastor of the First Church of Atheism, an organisation seeking to eliminate religious belief from the world. Plăcintă herself is thektitorissaof twoRomanian Orthodoxchurches. 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 fromSwedenin 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.