The deputy and vice-president of the “ȘOR” party, Marina Tauber, targeted in two criminal cases filed on “knowingly accepting party financing from an organized criminal group” and falsifying the party’s financial management report, remains under house arrest. The Chisinau Court of Appeal rejected on Thursday 6 October the appeals lodged by Marina Tauber’s lawyers and prosecutors and upheld the decision of the Chisinau Ciocana Court, which extended Marina Tauber’s pre-trial detention for 20 days.

“Today, after examining the appeals filed by the prosecutor and Marina Tauber’s defenders, the magistrates of the Chisinau Court of Appeal rejected them and maintained the decision of the Chisinau Ciocana Court, which extended Marina Tauber’s pre-trial detention for 20 days,” Mariana Cherpec, communications officer of the Prosecutor General’s Office, told Ziarul de Gardă.

On 28 September, the Chisinau Ciocana Court decided to partially accept the prosecutors’ request to extend the preventive measure of house arrest for another 20 days, applied to MP Marina Tauber.

The chairwoman of the “ȘOR” parliamentary faction was placed under house arrest on 14 September. At that time, the magistrates of the Court of Appeal decided to accept the requests of the MP’s lawyers and ordered the transfer of Marina Tauber from pre-trial detention in Penitentiary No. 13 to house arrest.

The Criminal College of the Chisinau Court of Appeal accepted the lawyers’ joint application and overturned the decision of the Chisinau Ciocana Court of 7 September 2022. The magistrates handed down a new decision partially accepting the prosecutor’s request and ordered the extension of the preventive measure in the form of house arrest for 20 days for Marina Tauber.

After the magistrates announced their decision, the MP said her time in custody at Prison No. 13 was so “complicated” that she could write a book. At the same time, she urged citizens once again to come out to protest against the current government.

In July 2022, anti-corruption prosecutors together with officers of the National Anti-Corruption Centre (CNA), conducted several raids in the criminal case on the illegal financing of the political party “ȘOR”. At the time, the CNA announced that in the first half of this year, the “ȘOR” political party had made payments amounting to 600,000 euros, while reported expenses were just over 228,000 lei.

According to the evidence on file, it was found that the party had knowingly accepted money of dubious origin from a “criminal group”, which was used for party purposes, such as fees for artists, salaries for members and the organisation of protests. According to the NAC, the money of the “criminal group” arrived in Moldova in the form of transfers and conversions, including in cryptocurrency, and various financing channels such as Dubai, Vienna and Monaco were used to disguise the origin of the funds.

Also in July, the acting Prosecutor General, Dumitru Robu, submitted to Parliament two requests for waiver of immunity for MP Marina Tauber, who is the subject of two criminal cases brought on the grounds of “knowingly accepting the financing of the “ȘOR” political party from an organised criminal group”. Tauber was stripped of her parliamentary immunity on Thursday 21 July.

Tauber described the lifting of parliamentary immunity as a “political decision that has already been taken”. The party’s vice-president declared herself innocent and said she was not afraid of anything, “neither of detention nor of searches”.

On 23 July, Marina Tauber was remanded in custody for 30 days in the 13th prison in the capital. On 16 August, magistrates extended the arrest warrant for Marina Tauber for a further 20 days in prison no. 13.