Former Moldovan President Igor Dodon, who is accused of committing the crime of passive bribery, organising and accepting political party funding from a “criminal organisation”, remains under judicial control for 60 days and is banned from leaving the country. The decision was taken on Monday 28 November by the judges of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ), who rejected the appeal lodged by anti-corruption prosecutors against the change of the preventive measure against the socialist.

“We consider that this is a rather serious problem, because, under these conditions, we find ourselves in the situation where in the future other defendants will be brought to trial and then we will end up in court when the requests for extending the arrest of several defendants on cases of resonance will be rejected and then the prosecutors are deprived of the right to challenge these decisions of the courts, as being declared inadmissible (…),” said anti-corruption prosecutor Petru Iarmaliuc after the decision.

On 18 November 2022, Igor Dodon was released from house arrest and placed under judicial control, with a ban on leaving the country.

Dodon is the first head of state to be tried for a crime committed while in office. For this reason, the case was referred directly to the CSJ, which by law is competent to try criminal cases involving offences committed by a head of state at first instance.

After several preliminary hearings, the CSJ began its examination of the merits of the “kuliok” case in a tense atmosphere on 11 November.

On 6 October 2022, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office announced the indictment of the criminal case against the former President of the Republic of Moldova, Igor Dodon, in the commission of the crime of passive bribery and organization and acceptance of political party financing from a criminal organization, committed during his term as President of the Republic of Moldova in June 2019.

The two-count case against Igor Dodon has been submitted to the CSJ for examination on the merits. According to the provisions of Article 39 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the CSJ is competent to judge in first instance criminal cases concerning crimes committed by the President of the Republic of Moldova, the Prosecutor’s Office said.

“According to the charges brought against Igor Dodon, the latter is accused of having demanded and accepted from them money in the amount of $600,000 to $1,000,000 in order to promote the interests of Vladimir Plahotniuc and Sergei Yaralov, who created and led a criminal organization and had an interest in controlling the political, social and economic processes in Moldova, as well as to evade criminal liability in the Russian Federation. This amount was demanded by Igor Dodon to pay the current expenses of the political party “Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova” (PSRM), including the salaries of the employees of the same party,” reads the statement published by the PA.

“I declare myself completely innocent and we will prove this in court. This is a 100% political case, sewn with yellow thread, with false witnesses. In addition, we have identified numerous irregularities and mistakes on the part of the prosecutors, who rushed to send the case to court to report to the country’s leadership on the tasks they set themselves,” Igor Dodon said after the case was sent to court.

The criminal prosecution in the case generically called “kuliok” was resumed on 18 May 2022, a day after the Chisinau CA overturned in full the decision of the Chisinau Ciocana district court to uphold the previously issued order of non-prosecution against the former president of Moldova. The case is based on a video footage of a meeting between Igor Dodon, Vladimir Plahotniuc and Serghei Iaralov in June 2019, in which the PDM leader is seen giving Dodon a black bag in which it was speculated there was money. In that recording, Igor Dodon tells Plahotniuc not to “walk around with his asses” and to pass the bag to Cornel (supposedly Corneliu Furculiță, editor’s note), because he was going to pay certain salaries. Plahotniuc then told Iaralov to give the money to Costea (supposedly Constantin Botnari, editor’s note) to pass on to Cornel.

The video footage, published by former MP Iurie Renita, is a continuation of the video recording of the meeting of the three in June 2019, when Dodon said he receives monthly money from the Russian Federation to finance the PSRM. Later, Dodon publicly stated that he had played a role in those discussions, with the aim of ousting Plahotniuc from government.

Igor Dodon is suspected of illicit enrichment, passive bribery, acceptance of political party financing by a criminal organisation and treason against the Motherland.