Former Moldovan Railways (CFM) chief Iurie Topală, accused of abuse of office, will be released under judicial control. The request of prosecutors from the Prosecutor’s Office for Combating Organized Crime and Special Cases (PCCOCS) to extend his house arrest was rejected by the Buiucani court of Chisinau.

According to a PCCOCS press release, pre-trial detention could not be requested at that judicial stage, and the court ordered the application of judicial control on the former head of the Moldovan Railways.

Earlier the same court rejected the PCCOCS prosecutors’ request to extend his pre-trial detention and place him under house arrest in January 2023.

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.

In the course of the prosecution, PCCOCS prosecutors, together with employees of the Criminal Assets Recovery Agency, identified and seized movable and immovable assets of both the accused and the 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.

Iurie Topală, a former municipal councillor and an exponent of the Liberal Party, led the 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.