The former head of the Moldovan Railways (CFM) Iurie Topala, accused of abuse of office, has been placed under house arrest. The Buiucani court in Chisinau decided on Friday, January 27, to change the preventive measure against the former director, after three months of detention in Penitentiary No. 13, to house arrest.

The information was confirmed to ZdG by the spokesman of the Prosecutor’s Office for Combating Organised Crime and Special Cases (PCCOCS), Emil Gaitur.

“Although the PCCOCS does not agree, the law does not provide for challenging this decision at the judicial stage,” Gaitur said.

The PCCOCS announced on 21 December 2022 the indictment of former CFM director Iurie Topala, extradited in early November from Belgium on two counts in the case against the company he headed.

During the criminal prosecution, PCCOCS prosecutors, together with employees of the Criminal Assets Recovery Agency, identified and seized movable and immovable assets of both the accused and interlocutors, which were located in Moldova, but also in foreign jurisdictions such as Romania and Belgium. The total value of the seizures is approximately €1 million.

Prosecutors accuse the former director of failing to collect revenues of almost 800 million lei as a result of his overstepping his duties. This, in turn, did not allow to cover the internal losses recorded by CFM from other activities, which caused considerable damage to the company’s assets of almost 100 million lei, resulting from net losses in 2018 and 2019, according to PCCOCS.

Former CFM chief Iurie Topala, detained in January 2022 by INTERPOL officers in Belgium, was extradited on 3 November 2022 to Moldova. On 4 November, the Prosecutor General’s Office (PG) announced that Iurie Topala’s lawyers had challenged for the third time at the Chisinau Court of Appeal the 30-day preventive arrest warrant issued on 29 July 2021 against him.

On 14 November, the magistrates of the Chisinau Court of Appeal (CA) rejected the appeal filed by Iurie Topala’s lawyers against the preventive arrest measure. Thus, Iurie Topală remained in custody in Penitentiary No. 13.

On 11 January 2022, the Belgian authorities detained Iurie Topală at the “Gosselies – Charleroi” airport in Belgium. At that time, representatives of the Prosecutor General’s Office told ZdG that an arrest warrant had previously been issued for Topala in a criminal case initiated in connection with the mismanagement of CFM from 2015 to 2019, as a result of which CFM was damaged by 250 million lei.

“The former director of the Moldovan Railways, Iurie Topală, has been detained by the Belgian authorities and is to be extradited to the Republic of Moldova. An arrest warrant has been issued for him and he is wanted internationally. The warrant was issued in the framework of a criminal case initiated, on the fact of abuse of office, committed in the interest of an organized criminal group, in connection with mismanagement at the Moldovan Railways, produced in the period 2015-2019, as a result of which the enterprise was damaged by 250 million lei,” PG representatives told ZdG.

Iurie Topala, a former municipal councillor and an exponent of the Liberal Party, led CFM from 2015 to 2019. In 2019, Ziarul de Gardă wrote that Topală owns a thriving business in the road sector – “Ruta-Prim” Ltd. – which manages in Chisinau the routes: 113, 135, 186, 188, 192 – with more than 240 minibus units and about 25 buses on route 22 and the Chisinau-Grătiești route.

In 2012, Iurie Topală’s name appeared in an investigation by Ziarul de Gardă on the administration of routes in Chisinau.