The wealth and personal interests of Judge Sergiu Osoianu, interim president of Straseni Court, are being checked by the National Integrity Authority (ANI), after Ziarul de Gardă wrote about the state facilities he benefited from and the house he is building.

The inspection was initiated on 24 March 2023, following a complaint from the authorities, which stated that, on 22 August 2022, Ziarul de Gardă had published the journalistic investigation “State facilities and the house under construction of the acting president of the Strășeni Court”, which referred to Sergiu Osoianu’s imposing wealth, as stated in the minutes initiating the inspection.

Integrity inspector Vladislav Gorceac notes that after examining the data in the E-Integrity CIS and public portals, he has noted the apparent violation of the legal regime of declaration of personal assets and interests and the need to start the control procedure to verify the justification of the financial assets on which the acquisition of real estate was based.

In August 2022, Ziarul de Gardă wrote that Sergiu Osoianu was building a two-storey house in a suburb of the capital. The dwelling was built on a 6-acre plot of land, purchased in 2019 and valued, in the magistrate’s declarations of wealth and personal interests, at 150 thousand lei.

The building, already erected, has an area of 160 square meters. In his declarations of assets and interests, the magistrate indicated that it would have a cadastral value of 800 thousand lei, and the market value “after 50% completion of construction” would be 1.2 million lei.

On the classifieds websites, just one acre of land in the area where Osoianu built his house sells for about 80 thousand lei, while a 160 square meter house is worth at least 2.5 million lei.

Before building this building, the magistrate, a former prosecutor, benefited from several incentives from the state: he obtained, through the court, money for an apartment in Chisinau, then, for free, a building plot in Straseni, and later, an apartment at a preferential price in the capital.

Sergiu Osoianu was also a candidate for the position of member of the Superior Council of Magistrates, but failed the Pre-Vetting Commission test and was not admitted to the competition. He appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of Justice.