The National Integrity Authority (ANI) announces on Friday, December 2, that integrity inspectors have found a violation of the legal regime of declaration of wealth and personal interests by Igor Dodon, former president of Moldova, who is under criminal investigation in several cases. According to ANI, integrity inspectors found “the existence of a substantial difference and possession of unjustified wealth in the amount of 1, 175 457, 16 lei for the fiscal years 2017, 2018, 2019 between the wealth acquired and the income obtained in the period 23.12.2016 – 19.02.2020 by Igor Dodon, former President of the Republic of Moldova and members of his family”.

The act of finding will be sent to the court with a view to ordering the recovery for the state of the amount of the unjustified wealth or its confiscation.

According to the ANI’s act of finding, Igor Dodon shall be deprived of the right to hold public office and public dignity for a period of three years from the date on which the act of finding becomes final or from the date on which the court judgment confirming the existence of unjustified wealth becomes final and irrevocable.

The control of wealth and personal interests was initiated with regard to the former President of the country Igor Dodon in 2020. According to the act of ascertainment, two complaints were received during the verification procedure, with reference to journalistic investigations and media publications, in which the petitioners reported “about the enormous expenses incurred by the current President of the Republic of Moldova, Igor Dodon and his family and luxury vacations and trips in the last five years, as well as purchases of goods made by them in the reference period”.

In January 2020, Ziarul de Gardă wrote about a series of luxury holidays enjoyed by the Dodon family over the past decade: the Maldives, the Seychelles, Dubai or an exclusive villa at one of the most luxurious hotels on the Aegean Sea, a resort run by the family of Russia’s Prosecutor General Yurii Chaika.

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From 2009 to 2016, Igor Dodon was a member of the Moldovan Parliament, initially on the PCRM list and later on the PSRM list, which he took over in December 2011. Following the presidential elections in November 2016, Igor Dodon was elected president of Moldova. After the presidential elections in autumn 2020, Dodon returned to his position as leader of the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM). A year later, he announced that he was stepping down as a member of the Chisinau legislature and later announced that he would head the business association “Moldovan-Russian Business Union”.

Igor Dodon was detained on 24 May after anti-corruption prosecutors carried out ten raids for more than ten hours at several locations owned by Dodon and his relatives.

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 SCJ, 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 Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) began its examination of the merits of the “kuliok” case in a tense atmosphere on Friday 11 November. While only supporters of the former head of state had gathered in front of the CSJ in previous hearings, this time several women were present, who chanted anti-Dodon slogans throughout the hearing: “thief”, “to jail”, “traitor” and “liar”.

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

The two-count case against Igor Dodon has been submitted to the SCJ for examination on the merits. According to the provisions of Article 39 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the SCJ 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, in order to promote the interests of Vladimir Plahotniuc and Sergei Yaralov, who created and led a criminal organization and who had an interest in controlling political, social and economic processes in Moldova, as well as in evading criminal liability in the Russian Federation, demanded and accepted from them money in the amount of $600,000 to $1,000,000. 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 in order to report to the country’s leadership on the tasks they had 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 bags” 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.