Marin Ceaușescu Marin Ceaușescu Marin Ceaușescu (1916 – December 28, 1989) was a Romanian economist and diplomat, the older brother of Communist Romania's President Nicolae Ceaușescu. He graduated from the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest. Starting in 1974, Ceaușescu headed the Romanian Economic Agency in Vienna. He was believed to have been the conduit through whom Nicolae allegedly transferred millions of United States dollars into Swiss bank accounts. He was found hanged in the basement of the Romanian Embassy in Vienna, three days after his brother was executed in the Romanian Revolution of 1989. The police said it was a suicide.
Alexandru Drăghici As historian Marius Oprea notes, this initiative of his was the culmination of periodic antisemitic purges inside and outside the party structures. When Gheorghiu-Dej died in March 1965, Ion Gheorghe Maurer, Chivu Stoica, and Emil Bodnăraș, fearful of seeing Drăghici come to power, all backed Ceaușescu as the new leader. Maurer also considered that Ceaușescu had stood up to Khrushchev, while Drăghici was seen as a loyal follower of the Soviet Union. Bacon writes: "So powerful was the apparatus of terror that its chief, Alexandru Dr[ă]ghici, challenged Ceau[ș]escu for political power following Gheorghiu-Dej's death. It is a tribute to Ceau[ș]escu's