​Vet struck off six years after serving prison sentence for assaulting wife

A Dorset-based vet has been removed from the RCVS register six years after serving a prison sentence for assaulting his wife.

In a hearing just before Christmas, Costin-Nicolae Ghinescu was struck off for assault convictions and a subsequent drug-driving offence that he had failed to declare as part of his annual registration renewal.

College officials said while the RCVS was made aware of Dr Ghinescu’s assault convictions in 2020, undisclosed circumstances made its disciplinary process take longer than normal.

Guilty pleas

He faced three charges brought against him by RCVS’ disciplinary committee and admitted to the facts contained within the first two.

The first related to his 2019 convictions at Londonderry Magistrates Court after he pleaded guilty to one charge of threat to kill and two charges of assault against his wife, for which he received a six-month prison sentence and a pair of concurrent four-month sentences, respectively.

Dr Ghinescu emailed RCVS’ chief investigator in February 2020 to provide details of those convictions.

Asked if his convictions were investigated at the time, a college spokesperson said: “The RCVS did investigate the assault when it was first reported to us in 2020, but other circumstances of our investigation/the case against Mr Ghinescu, that we cannot disclose, meant that the matter as a whole took longer than usual.”

Second conviction

The second RCVS charge related to his December 2022 conviction at Poole Magistrates Court after he pleaded guilty to a drug-driving offence, for which he was disqualified from driving for 12 months and ordered to pay £309 in fines, surcharges and costs.

Although he had held non-practising RCVS member status since May 2021 – and said he had never worked as a veterinary surgeon in the UK since his arrival in 2014 – he denied his convictions rendered him unfit to practise.

Dr Ghinescu was also charged with being dishonest and misleading for failing to declare his latter conviction when renewing his registration in April 2023.

Misunderstanding

Regarding the third charge, he said his failure to declare it was a genuine misunderstanding on whether he was required to declare a driving conviction as part of his renewal.

The committee could not be certain beyond all reasonable doubt whether that belief was genuine, and so dishonesty was not proven.

However, the committee found his position was “plainly unreasonable of him and wrong” and his failure to declare was misleading – unintentional or not – although this was not considered to amount to serious professional misconduct.

But the convictions outlined in the first two charges, particularly the assaults, were “fundamentally incompatible with being registered as a veterinary surgeon” and deemed to render Dr Ghinescu unfit to practise.

‘Serious offences’

Committee chair Hilary Lloyd said: “They are clearly serious offences as reflected in the prison sentence Mr Ghinescu was required to serve.

“There were two separate assaults on [his wife], one in the car and then a prolonged attack in the house, involving repeated punches to the face and kicks to the body, followed by threats to kill. The committee considered this to be disgraceful conduct of the most grievous and reprehensible kind.

“The conduct represented a serious departure from professional standards; it was inexplicable, abhorrent behaviour, resulting in injuries to his wife. In light of these conclusions, the committee decided that the only appropriate and proportionate sanction in this case was removal from the register.”