During the first 100 days of the new government, Moldova has had three Prosecutor Generals: Eduard Harunjen (until July 11), Igor Popa (interim, July 11-30) and Dumitru Robu (interim, July 31 – to the present day). During this period, the General Prosecutor’s Office (PG) initiated several criminal cases of high public interest, especially after Dumitru Robu was appointed.

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The fate of some of these cases has changed radically as the head of the General Prosecutor’s Office changed. Thus, in some instances, the criminal prosecution was resumed after the previous general prosecutors had signed refusal orders to start investigations or even closed the cases. 

New criminal cases against Ilan Shor

Deputy and businessman Ilan Shor was sentenced to seven years and six months in prison, with am interdiction to leave the country. Nevertheless, he left Moldova through the Chișinău International Airport on a charter flight, without going through customs or border control.

For the illegal crossing of the state border, he risks a fine or up to 200 hours of unpaid community service, or up to two years imprisonment. The authorities have determined that Shor is currently in Israel, a state whose citizenship he holds and which does not extradite its citizens.

July 16. Interim Prosecutor General Igor Popa, announced that the “Chișinău Prosecutor’s Office is carrying out a series of criminal proceedings in a case of illegal crossing of the state border on June 14-17, 2019 by a deputy in the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova, accused of fraud and money laundering (Ilan Shor).”

July 25. At the request of the anti-corruption prosecutors, the magistrates of the Cahul Court of Appeal issued an arrest warrant in Ilan Shor’s name. The Ministry of Internal Affairs announced a national and international search for him.

August 2. The Prosecutor General offered new details on the circumstances of the illegal crossing of the state border by several persons through the Chișinău International Airport, “avoiding customs and border control.”

According to the prosecutors, this was possible due to: the negligent attitude of the employees of the Customs Service and of the General Inspectorate of the Border Police  (operating on the territory of the airport) towards their service obligations and with the direct involvement of Avia Invest employees – the company which owns the Airport in concession and provides the transport and air traffic services, including security measures at the airport from which the respective aircrafts managed to leave the country.

The Chișinău Prosecutor’s Office also initiated two criminal cases on:

• The negligence in carrying out duties, admitted by the employees of the Customs Service and of the General Inspectorate of the Border Police of the Chișinău International Airport. 
• The abuse of power committed by the decision-makers of the Avia Invest Company. 

August 15. Ilan Shor’s parliamentary immunity was removed due to the vote of the majority of the deputies. 

Dumitru Robu, interim Prosecutor General, based his request to remove Ilan Shor’s immunity on a criminal case opened on August 9, 2019, for the creation or management of a criminal organization, misappropriation of foreign assets, intentional insolvency and money laundering. 

A few days later, on August 12, the file was linked to another criminal case, pending at the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office since December 4, 2014, investigating the devaluation of the Moldovan bank system.

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A criminal case on the usurpation of state power

After the Government led by Maia Sandu was sworn in on June 8 and up until June 14 when the incumbent Democratic Party (PDM) announced their withdrawal from government, Moldova experienced a so-called “duality of power.” Later, the PDM parliamentary opposition and the new government accused each other of usurping state power, requesting that the interim Prosecutor General start a criminal investigation. The request of the Democratic Party deputies was not admitted on the grounds that “it does not comply with the requirements of form and content, provided by the Criminal Procedure Code.”

July 23. Igor Popa, interim Prosecutor General, issued an order refusing to initiate a criminal prosecution based on the denunciation of Andrei Năstase, Minister of Internal Affairs, filed on June 20, 2019, on the ground that there is no crime of “usurpation of state power.”

August 5, 2019. Dumitru Robu, the new interim Prosecutor General – still in his first five days in office – canceled the refusal order to start the criminal prosecution issued by Igor Popa and signed a new ordinance to initiate a criminal case on the usurpation of state power by the former government of Moldova during June 7-14, 2019. The Prosecutor’s Office announced that “factual and legal errors have been found in the refusal order for criminal prosecution, issued by the former interim Prosecutor General, Igor Popa.”

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Turkish teachers’ extradition file

Seven Turkish citizens, employees of the Orizont high school network, were “expelled” from Moldova on the morning of September 6, 2018. At the time, Security and Intelligence Service representatives claimed that the seven Turkish citizens allegedly had links with an Islamist group, and there was evidence that they had carried out illegal actions in several countries. The seven were declared undesirable on the territory of Moldova through a decision from the Bureau for Migration and Asylum, signed on September 5, 2018, by Director Olga Poalelungi.

August 2. The Chișinău Prosecutor’s Office announced that it had initiated a criminal case for abuse of power or overstepping of authority, committed by employees of the Bureau of Migration and Asylum (BMA) under the Ministry of Internal Affairs and by employees of the Information and Security Service (SIS). 

The Prosecutor’s Office announced that they based the criminal case on the materials of the internal investigation, carried out by the Internal Protection and Anti-Corruption Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as on the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to convict Moldova for violating the rights of Turkish citizens. Through this decision, the ECtHR obliged the Republic of Moldova to pay the Turkish citizens compensation amounting to 125 thousand euros.

September 5. An accusation was forwarded to Olga Poalelungi, BMA director, within this criminal case, for exceeding service obligations causing severe consequences. The prosecutors applied a preventive measure – the interdiction to leave the country.

September 6. Former SIS deputy director, Alexandru Baltaga, was detained for 72 hours and charged with exceeding service obligations causing severe consequences.

September 9. Following the conclusion of the Chișinău Court, Alexandru Baltaga was placed under house arrest for a period of 30 days. That same day, Olga Poalelungi was suspended from the position of BMA director at the prosecutors’ request. 

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The phone tapping case

June 14. Just hours before the announcement of the Democratic Party’s withdrawal from the government, Rise Moldova published an investigation that revealed that from 2017 to 2019, the authorities carried out a real campaign of intercepting phone calls and spying on several politicians, representatives of civil society, journalists and other public persons.

August 8. Almost two months after the press published information that the PDM government was intercepting the phone calls of their opponents, the Prosecutor General’s Office issued its first official reaction to the accusations. In a press release, the Prosecutor General’s Office  announced that it initiated three criminal cases calling for “verifications as to the legality, soundness, and timeliness of the order, and for carrying out special investigative measures on the reported cases.” The Prosecutor General’s Office “will issue decisions on the actions of the responsible persons, from a legal point of view.”

September 2. The Prosecutor General’s Office announced that interim Prosecutor General Dumitru Robu had started three criminal cases and ordered them to be sent to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office for criminal prosecution on the facts of illegal telephone tapping.

“The criminal prosecution started by the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office is based on the subjects’ complexity and the specificity of the constitutional rights and guarantees for the citizens, violated by illegal telephone tapping and gathering of information,” the PG statement said. 

Case on the artificial increase of the electrical energy tariff

September 4. Criminal prosecution is resumed in a case that had started on October 19, 2015, and was closed on August 26, 2016, which targeted criminal acts that allegedly led to the artificial increase of the electricity tariff, liable to cause extremely severe damages.

At the same time, according to the PG, the Prosecutor’s Office for Combating Organized Crime and Special Cases initiated two other criminal cases, having detected that the aforementioned scheme functioned during the years 2014-2019, with the involvement of some public persons exercising public functions.

Deputies arrested in the Bank Fraud case

September 16. The Parliament voted to lift the immunity of Shor Party deputies Marina Tauber and Reghina Apostolova. They were detained soon after for 72 hours in cases related to the 2014 bank fraud. “There is evidence that, since August 17, 2012 deputies Marina Tauber and Reghina Apostolova have been actively involved in the devaluation of the bank. Marina Tauber, being a shareholder at Unibank, created favorable conditions for Ilan Shor to be able to devalue the bank. Thus, the two deputies participated actively in the bank fraud,” said the interim Prosecutor General Dumitru Robu in the plenary of the Parliament.

On the same day, the homes of the two detained deputies were searched. The searches continued the next day (September 17) at the homes and offices of several persons involved in the same criminal case. Among those targeted was Vladimir Novosadiuc, a close friend of Ilan Shor and the director of Sputnik Moldova news agency.