The Superior Council of Prosecutors (CSP) rejected on Thursday, 2 March, the appointment of several interim and deputy heads. However, the CSP approved the appointment of the interim heads of the Bender Municipal Prosecutor’s Office, the Dubasari District Prosecutor’s Office and the Riscani District Prosecutor’s Office.

Thus, the nomination of Dumitru Barbuța for the interim position of Deputy Chief Prosecutor of the Prosecutor’s Office for Combating Organised Crime and Special Cases (PCCOCS) was rejected by the CSP. He has about 5 years of work experience, having been appointed in 2018 as a prosecutor in the Cahul Prosecutor’s Office. Since January 2023, he has been acting as interim deputy chief prosecutor of PCCOCS, he said.

At the same time, the CSP rejected the interim assignment of the Chief Prosecutor of the Non-Criminal Proceedings and ECHR Implementation Section of the Prosecutor General’s Office to Iuri Lealin.

Iuri Lealin is a prosecutor in the Section for Representation in Non-Criminal Proceedings and Implementation of the ECHR in the Judicial Directorate of the General Prosecutor’s Office. Since 2017, he has been a trainer at the National Institute of Justice. He started his career in the prosecution bodies in 2009 as a senior specialist in the Prosecutor General’s Office. Lealin also aspires to the position of member of the CSP.

The CSP also rejected the interim appointment of Alexandru Machidon, a prosecutor with the Chisinau City Prosecutor’s Office who was previously employed in Ciuleni, as chief prosecutor of the Criuleni District Prosecutor’s Office. ZdG previously wrote that Machidon handled a case involving a watermelon theft, in which he called for prison sentences for the accused.

The CSP also rejected the appointment of Sergiu Roșu, a prosecutor in the PCCOCS, who was to act as interim Deputy Chief Prosecutor of the Stefan Voda District Prosecutor’s Office. In April 2021, ANI found that Sergiu Roșu had violated the legal regime for the declaration of wealth and personal interests by including incomplete and erroneous data in the declarations submitted for the years 2016-2019.

For this period, “the prosecutor omitted to declare the income obtained in 2016 in the amount of 10 thousand lei from the sale of a Volvo 850 car. In 2018, he failed to declare an income in the amount of 400 euros, obtained in the form of a bank transfer from an individual in the UK. In 2017, the prosecutor also took out a financial loan in the amount of approximately 10 thousand lei from a Moldovan credit company, which he failed to declare.”

Sergiu Rosu received a severe reprimand in 2013 after some information appeared in an article in ZdG.

Interim chief prosecutors of the territorial prosecutor’s offices

Vitalie Bisleaga, a prosecutor in the Anenii Noi Prosecutor’s Office, will act as interim chief prosecutor of the Bender Prosecutor’s Office. He was mentioned in the ZdG investigation “Prosecutors “helped” by parents with donations of millions” in 2018 for a donation in the amount of 3 thousand USD from his mother.

Nicolae Geru, a prosecutor from the Chisinau Prosecutor’s Office, whom ZdG wrote about earlier, will act as interim chief prosecutor of the Dubasari District Prosecutor’s Office.

ZdG reported how in May 2015, by decisions of the Council of Codru, a town on the coast of Chisinau, the family of prosecutor Nicolae Geru received a plot of land with an area of almost 6 acres on Andrei Vînaru Street, in an elite sector of the town, where other former or current prosecutors and, at the time, the leader of the DA Party, Andrei Năstase, owned buildings. On the same day, the Dulgheru family also benefited from a similar plot of land. The property was registered in the name of the family of Ion Dulgheru’s brother, Andrei, also a prosecutor at the time in the Riscani Prosecutor’s Office in Chisinau.

According to cadastral information, on the same day, August 21, 2015, the Dulgheru and Geru families were issued the titles of authentication of the right of the land owners. According to market prices, the Geru family lot would be worth about one million lei (50 thousand euros), and the Dulgheru family lot between 400 and 500 thousand lei (20-25 thousand euros).

Sergiu Crețu, a prosecutor in the Prosecutor General’s Office, will act as interim Chief Prosecutor of the Riscani District Prosecutor’s Office.

The appointment of the anti-corruption prosecutor Octavian Iachimovschi as deputy chief prosecutor of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office is to be discussed at the next meeting of the CSP, as Justice Minister Veronica Mihailov-Moraru has announced her abstention due to lack of quorum.

According to the law, the interim office of Chief Prosecutor, Deputy Chief Prosecutor, Chief Prosecutor of the General Prosecutor’s Office or Deputy Chief Prosecutor of the General Prosecutor’s Office is granted by order of the Prosecutor General. The Superior Council of Prosecutors approves or rejects the interim appointment ordered by order of the Prosecutor General. In case it rejects the interim ordered by the Prosecutor General, the High Council of Prosecutors shall appoint the interim to the position.