UPDATE 5:00 PM: The President of the Superior Council of Prosecutors (CSP) denies the statements made by Igor Demciucin, according to whom Dumitru Obadă is related to the candidate for the position of General Prosecutor, Octavian Iachimovschi, who scored the highest. Obadă made statements to this effect after Monday’s CSP meeting, which was postponed.

Original Article:

One of the candidates for the position of General Prosecutor requests the Superior Council of Prosecutors (CSP) to send his file to the Vetting Commission for external evaluation of his ethical and financial integrity. This concerns the Deputy Interim Prosecutor General, Igor Demciucin.

On Monday, February 26, Igor Demciucin sent three requests to the CSP. In two of them, the candidate, who ranked second in the competition, asked the Council to exclude the evaluation sheets of the candidates for the position of General Prosecutor, filled out by the President of the CSP, Dumitru Obadă, and the Minister of Justice Veronica Mihailov-Moraru, as a result of the interview before the Council, in the public competition for selecting the candidate for the position of General Prosecutor.

Specifically, the Deputy Interim General Prosecutor claims that Obadă is related to Octavian Iachimovschi, the candidate who scored the highest.

“Dumitru Obadă’s relationship with Octavian Iachimovschi cannot be ignored, raising serious questions about his objectivity in the evaluation process. There is a risk that this affinity relationship may lead to subjective preferences in evaluating candidates, thus affecting the fairness and impartiality of the selection process,” Demciucin stated.

Regarding the Minister of Justice, the candidate mentioned that Mihailov-Moraru abstained earlier in March 2023 from examining the agenda item of the CSP meeting regarding the interim appointment of Octavian Iachimovschi as the deputy chief of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.

“To ensure transparency in all details, I want to communicate that in my previous work as a lawyer, I had dealings with Mr. Iachimovschi, participated in several quite complex and resonant cases. We do not question Mr. Iachimovschi’s professional experience, but, correctly, it would be to mention this and refrain from examining the matter,” the minister declared at that time.

In the third request, Demciucin referred to Law 252 on the external evaluation of judges and prosecutors and the amendment of some normative acts, which since December 2023 stipulates that subjects of evaluation are at most two candidates for the positions indicated in lit. a), c), and d) who have scored the highest in competitions held until December 31, 2025, including candidates for the position of General Prosecutor.

“Based on this logic and the explicit purpose of legislative changes, it is evident that the Superior Council of Prosecutors should have transmitted to the Prosecutor’s Evaluation Commission the information regarding Octavian Iachimovschi’s candidacy, as well as my candidacy, for external evaluation of their ethical and financial integrity. According to the new legal provisions, the two candidates with the highest scores should have been subjected to this evaluation, and in the decreasing order of the scores obtained, Octavian Iachimovschi and I should have been forwarded for this process,” Demciucin argued.

During the meeting on February 22, the CSP accepted the recusal request of council member Aliona Nesterov, filed by candidate Igor Demciucin.

Interim Prosecutor General Ion Munteanu submitted requests to the CSP in the context of the competition for selecting the candidate for the position of General Prosecutor. The requests of the prosecutor are to be examined on Monday, February 26, during a Council meeting.