The General Prosecutor’s Office will retry the criminal case opened after in the public appeared a video in which the former leader of the Democratic Party, the oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc, sends a black bag, allegedly with money, to the ex-president of Moldova Igor Dodon.

The information was confirmed for Ziarul de Gradă by the interim general prosecutor, Dumitru Robu.

“As we mentioned in the communiqué of the General Prosecutor’s Office of October 13, all criminal cases and criminal proceedings that are of increased interest to society, including the process mentioned by you, will be subject to control,” said Dumitru Robu.

In 2020, on this case, the General Prosecutor’s Office announced that it had started a criminal trial based on the complaints filed by Andrei Năstase, then Dignity and Truth president, and Iurie Reniță, who was a deputy. Subsequently, the General Prosecutor’s Office stated that it would not initiate a criminal case because it is impossible to determine what was in that black bag.

In May 2020, the former deputy Iurie Reniță presented during a press briefing a video sequence from the meeting between Dodon with Plahotniuc and Iaralov (a meeting that would have taken place in 2019), in which Plahotniuc sent Dodon a black bag. Reniță mentioned then that there was money in that bag and requested the initiation of the procedure for the suspension from the office of Dodon, who, at that time, was the president of Moldova. The former head of state said that everything was “a set-up” and that he did not know what was in the package that appears in the video images, although the discussions between Dodon and Plahotniuc showed that what was in the bag was intended to pay the Socialist Party members.

Also in 2020, commenting on the famous images with the black bag that Dodon receives from Plahotniuc, Alexandr Stoianoglo, then general prosecutor, said that a procedural decision was taken: “The case will not be investigated even if someone does not with it, they could sue the Prosecutor’s Office if they disagree.”

A year later, at the beginning of September 2021, during a TV show, Stoianoglo said that there is not enough evidence to hold someone accountable in the black bag case, but he is convinced that in that bag was money: “I am convinced that there was money, but one is what I think and the other what evidence we have. There are two different things. We have to bring accusations to people based on the evidence we have on this case, but we have very serious problems with this.”