POLITICAL (IN)JUSTICE: How did the 38 So-called Political Cases Examined By the Prosecutor’s Office End?
Imagine a country led by an oligarch, where the judicial system punishes people because the head of the system does not like them. For the last few years, the prosecutors or judicial offices initiated dozens of cases against people criticizing the Moldovan oligarch Vlad Plahotniuc.
As Plahotniuc lost elections in 2019, he left Moldova. However, the judicial system keeps those cases opened. Only three out of the 38 so-called political cases ended with a final court sentence.
One of the three cases belongs to the former judge Domnica Manole from April 2016 after ordering the Central Electoral Commission to conduct a referendum requested by DA Platform.
In five other cases, the courts partially ordered the defendants’ dismissals. The prosecutors challenged the decisions, and the cases are ongoing.
Also, three retrials and other 12 pending cases are stagnating: either the Prosecutor’s Office postpones the hearings or the case’s judge changes, or the prosecution witnesses are missing. In other cases, prosecutors announced they would drop the charge, but to no avail.
The other two files from this category relate to ACUM protest, the phone tapping of some journalists, politicians, civic activists, and the lawyer Victor Munteanu, who was allegedly pursued and tapped illegally.
These are the Prosecutor’s Office’s unfinished investigative actions. The General Prosecutor’s Office states that the working group set up by the General Prosecutor is active and will present a preliminary review in a few weeks.
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