Officers of the Organized Crime Investigation Directorate of the National Investigation Inspectorate (INI), together with prosecutors from the Prosecutor’s Office for Combating Organized Crime and Special Cases (PCCOCS), have detained four members of the “Machena criminal organization,” who allegedly implemented the plan to kidnap a man and threatened him with death, the Inspectorate General of Police (IGP) announced.

The four men are aged between 23 and 41. They were detained on Tuesday 7 February following searches.

“The case took place in Rezina in December 2022. Initially, they bullied and physically assaulted the 36-year-old man, whom they forced by applying physical violence and threatening him with an automatic firearm to get into the car with them. There, they threatened him with serious injury and death for two hours – both during the journey to Chisinau and in the parking lot where they arrived,” according to the IGP.

According to law enforcement officers, the motive is said to be revenge for the victim’s statements against the thief “Machena,” who was sentenced to 19 years in prison in the criminal case in which the man was also a victim of blackmail by the convicted thief.

Until recently, the man was also detained, in another institution, so “the suspects took advantage of his release to implement their act of revenge,” IGP representatives say.

PCCOCS prosecutors are to present the charges and request their remand in custody for a period of 30 days for further investigation, during which time the suspects are presumed innocent, according to the law.

By the sentence of the Criminal College of the Chisinau Court of Appeal of 27 April 2012, Vladimir Moscalciuc, alias Machena, was found guilty and sentenced to 19 years’ imprisonment, to be served in a closed prison.

The Chisinau Court reduced the sentence imposed on Vladimir Moscalciuc, alias Machena, by 1,927 days.

ZdG previously wrote that during the judicial investigation prosecutors established that in the years 1999-2010, V. Moscalciuc convicted and detained in various penitentiaries of the republic, formed the criminal organization named “Machena”, consisting of meetings of criminal groups, one of which carried out its criminal activity on the territory of Pruncul Penitentiary.

In order to create money to support the organization in the penitentiary institutions and to attract other members from the ranks of the inmates, the members of the underworld network blackmailed other convicts of the penitentiary. The latter were threatened with death and forced to pay large sums of money. These sums were extorted from the relatives of convicts who were at liberty through various criminal schemes set up by members of the “Machena” criminal organisation.