Prosecutors today demanded a 7-year prison sentence for former Prime Minister Vlad Filat. The prosecution has also requested to charge Filat the sum of 12.8 million lei to the state’s account as the countervalue of the money laundered.

During the hearing on Friday, January 19, at the Buiucani court in Chisinau, the prosecutor Nadejda Busuioc read the plea on the case in which former Prime Minister Vlad Filat is accused of money laundering in particularly large proportions.

The prosecution requested that the former Prime Minister be sentenced to 7 years in prison, with the sentence to be served in a semi-closed prison.

In reply, Filat’s lawyers said that the prosecutor’s plea contained counter-arguments to their evidence and did not prove the former prime minister’s guilt.

The former prime minister argues that the case is lacking in evidence and the prosecutor should have dropped the charges. He also says he is interested in having a legal decision handed down on the case.

“I hope that the court will objectively and legally examine the evidence and arguments brought before the court and make a decision. I am interested in a legal decision. At the basis of this case is the previous conviction, which the ECHR decision found was an unfair case, based on closed hearings without hearing witnesses. That is why I find it strange that the prosecutor insists on going ahead,” Vlad Filat told Ziarul de Gardă.

The case in which ex-premier Vlad Filat is accused of money laundering in particularly large proportions was sent to trial in 2018, with the first court hearing taking place in January 2019

The former prime minister is accused of having laundered money in particularly large proportions during 2013, using an intermediary with whom he was in a relationship of affinity to make transfers. Thus, on 1 July 2013, Filat allegedly signed a contract with a Washington, US-based consultancy company to assist in the electoral campaign for the PLDM, of which he was leader, for the November 2014 parliamentary elections. For the contracted services, he allegedly paid the non-resident company a total of 12,847,902 lei, making regular transfers from the accounts of companies managed through the intermediary, in which financial means obtained through corruption offences were deposited from the Savings Bank.

The law provides for a prison sentence of five to ten years for the offence of money laundering on a particularly large scale.