A prosecutor who has investigated numerous cases of major corruption in the United States has been appointed head of the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office in the Republic of Moldova, an institution similar to the Romanian National Anticorruption Directorate. The appointment of the new prosecutor is important both for the reform of the judiciary and the rapprochement of the Republic of Moldova with the EU, and for the consolidation of the political class in Chisinau, especially the opposition in Parliament, as the leaders of this opposition, oriented towards Russia, seem to all have integrity issues.
Who is the new anticorruption prosecution chief ?
The new head of the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office is Veronica Dragalin, who will take office in August. Until now, she has been a deputy prosecutor in the United States, in the public corruption and civil rights department of the office of the American DA of the Central District of California.
Veronica Drăgălin has a history similar to that of many Bessarabians of her generation. She was born in the Republic of Moldova. At the age of eight, her family emigrated to Italy. She attended the first grade in the Republic of Moldova, the second in Italy, the third and fourth in Germany. At the age of 11, she arrived in the United States, where she continued her studies and graduated from law school.
In 2019, Veronica Dragalin was the winner of the “Case of the Year” Award of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and in 2020, she won the FBI Director's Award.
In the interview for the position of Chief of the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office in Chisinau, Veronica Dragalin, who has an 11-year career in the American justice system, said that the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office in the Republic of Moldova must regain citizens’ trust.
She stressed that prosecutors must act without regard to the political affiliation of those in conflict with the law.
“The Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office has the mandate and the obligation to act and hold criminals accountable, to return the stolen money and goods to the people and to generate respect for the law. Prosecutors also have the responsibility to apply the law equally, regardless of political affiliation and wealth”, said Veronica Dragalin. She mentioned that she comes from outside the system, so she will not be influenced from either inside or outside.
It is possible, though, that this is exactly where Veronica Dragalin’s problmes might actually begin.
Veronica Dragalin will have to face a strong resistance from the system
Several experts believe that she will face strong resistance from the system in her attempt to fundamentally reform the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office.
In the past, too, there have been attempts to reform the prosecutor's office, but they have failed. “I think it will be very [difficult] for her, because, for the most part, there are prosecutors within the institution who worked there 5-10 years ago, when the same prosecutor's office was committing abuses. Now the same prosecutors in the system are active and I don’t think that they are willing to be reformed very quickly in the sense of the goals that Mrs. Dragalin has set. [...] I think it is a very complicated mission, but it remains to be seen whether or not it is achievable”, says the expert Vadim Vieru from the Promo-LEX Association, specialized in the observance of human rights in the Republic of Moldova.
In turn, the political analyst Ion Tabarta is of the opinion that the cleansing of the prosecutor's office, full of corrupt people, must be carried out without abuses, even if the resistance of the system will be extraordinary:
“One of her missions will be to bring new people into the system, people who have no integrity issues and people who really want to change things for the better in the Republic of Moldova”, Ion Tabarta said.
Opposition leaders in the Moldovan parliament have serious integrity issues
Although Veronica Dragalin stated in her interview with the Superior Council of Prosecutors that prosecutors must act without taking into account the political affiliation of corrupt persons, the files she will have to investigate might have a broad political resonance anyway, which cannot be ignored.
Why? Because all the leaders of the three opposition parties represented in Parliament - the Party of Socialists, the Party of Communists, the Communist Party and the Shor Party - have integrity issues, some of them quite serious.
The honorary president of the Party of Socialists, Igor Dodon, for example, is under criminal investigation for several charges, including bribery and treason. One of the evidences used in this case is the already emblematic video recording in which Igor Dodon appears taking a bag allegedly containing money from the former leader of the Democratic Party, Vlad Plahotniuc; in the discussion with the oligarch, Dodon acknowledges that he reports weekly to the Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin on the situation in the Republic of Moldova.
For his part, the leader of the Shor Party, Ilan Shor, currently wanted, is the main suspect in the “one-million-dollar theft” case. It is about the stealing, in 2014, of over 1.5 billion dollars from three banks in the Republic of Moldova. In 2017, Ilan Shor was sentenced in the first instance to seven years and six months in prison. However, he did not end up in detention because the sentence is not final. His case has been before the Court of Appeal for five years without a decision being made so far.
The third leader of the parliamentary opposition, the president of the Party of Communists, Vladimir Voronin, probably appears more honorable compared to Igor Dodon and Ilan Shor, but he also has his skeletons in the closet, from the time he was head of state. First of all, the case related to the violent protests of April 2009, when thousands of people took to the streets in protest, accusing the communists of winning the parliamentary elections, has not been finalized to this day. During these protests, several people lost their lives in suspicious conditions, although the prosecutor's office concluded that it was just a victim, a young man named Valeriu Boboc, killed by a police officer. There are suspicions that the police then intervened brutally as ordered or with the consent of Vladimir Voronin. Also, in the public media in Chisinau there is insistent talk about the fact that Vladimir Voronin was the one who allowed the money laundering through banks in the Republic of Moldova of the first installments of the huge amount of over 20 billion dollars from Russia. In other words, the “Laundromat” case, and the main suspect in this case is the controversial businessman Veaceslav Platon. He is currently in London, where he is trying to escape Moldovan justice. There are only two of suspicions hovering over Vladimir Voronin.
This is what the leaders of the three opposition parties in the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova look like, parties oriented, to a greater or lesser extent, towards Russia.
One of the priorities: to shed light on the big cases in which the opposition leaders are involved.
Therefore, Veronica Dragalin will also have to fight the parliamentary opposition, which was in power until recently, because these files must be finalized. She will inevitably be accused by the opposition of playing the game of power, that is, of President Maia Sandu and of the Action and Solidarity Party, which holds the majority in the Legislature, and that she was put at the head of the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office to destroy the opposition. And in a democratic society, the persecution of the opposition is inadmissible, isn't it?
However, Veronica Dragalin will have to act without taking into account the political affiliation of the corrupt people, as she promised to do when she was appointed.
First of all, in order to investigate the suspicions of corruption and embezzlement in particularly large proportions that hover over the leaders of the three opposition parties and to complete the cases that have been opened for them and that have been postponed or dragged through courts of law for years, with no finality whatsoever.
Two. Only by shedding light on major corruption cases, in which the main suspects are leaders of political parties, can we talk about a real judicial reform in the Republic of Moldova, one that the Chisinau authorities have been committed to for many years, but which so far has been rather mimicked. So, the completion of the most important corruption cases could really mean the beginning of a real reform of the judiciary, and an extra step, an important step, in fact, in the Republic of Moldova’s rapprochement with the EU.
Three. As we have shown above, the opposition parties in the current Parliament are, one way or another, in favor of Russia and are led by individuals who are suspected of corruption. Moscow has never been bothered by this. At the same time, if these leaders were to be proven guilty in court and if at least some of them were convicted of bribery, for stealing the one billion dollars or other crimes, these parties would lose a lot of weight and inevitably lose voters. It is important that the evidence on the basis of which they are convicted is unbeatable and that the trials are as transparent as possible so that they do not leave room for interpretation.
Therefore, a reorganization of the judiciary would also lead to the purification of the political system in the Republic of Moldova. And a purification of the political system could also mean a decrease in the popularity of the most important pro-Russian parties that would prove to be corrupt and involved in the theft of billions. The decline in the popularity of these parties would inevitably lead to the strengthening of pro-European forces and the rapprochement with the EU.
Therefore, the appointment of a person like Veronica Dragalin at the head of the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office could ensure or, at least, facilitate the European course of the Republic of Moldova and bring this state closer to the free world.
