The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (PA) announces that the head of the “South” Investigations Directorate of the National Investigation Inspectorate (INI), Sergiu Solovei, who is the target of a case of illicit enrichment, has been detained for 72 hours. At the same time, law enforcement officials have come up with more details after nine searches were carried out on Friday morning, 12 August, in the case against the head of the INI Directorate.

More specifically, following the searches carried out in Solovei’s office, home, non-lodging rooms and car, as well as at the premises of a resident economic entity affiliated to him, the law enforcement officers found that the official, exercising managerial functions within INI, “owned and continues to own personally, including through third parties, assets whose value exceeds by more than 780 thousand lei the legally acquired and declared means”.

“Anti-corruption prosecutors will then indict him, after which they will submit to the investigating judge a request for the application of a preventive measure in the form of preventive custody for a period of 30 days,” the press release issued by the PA said.

Thus, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, the assets under investigation are:

• A house under construction located in a residential area in a suburb of Chisinau;2 apartments and 2 underground car parks located in Chisinau;
• more than 50 agricultural plots;
• 2 means of transport.
• “Similarly, a number of resident legal entities are being investigated in the prosecution process that are allegedly affiliated and/or owned through third parties by the special-status public official.

Subsequently, we inform that during the searches, purchase contracts, loan agreements, customs declarations, documents on real and movable property owned and other items of importance for the criminal case were found and seized,” the Prosecutor’s Office notes.

Criminal proceedings are still under way to establish all the circumstances surrounding the case, the outcome of which we will report back with further information.

Anti-corruption prosecutors from the Southern office together with officers of the Internal Protection and Anti-Corruption Service of the MIA raided the home of the head of the Southern Investigation Directorate of the National Investigation Inspectorate (INI), Sergiu Solovei, on Friday morning, 12 August. The information was confirmed to Ziarul de Gardă by prosecutor Mariana Cherpec, spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General’s Office.