The pro-European government in Chisinau has pledged to fight corruption and reform the judiciary. Both are difficult processes and it remains to be seen how far they will go or whether they will rather opt for the more convenient “televised justice”, showing spectacular cases, meant to increase ratings and, implicitly, bring more votes.
People from the former governments, the first targets of the anti-corruption campaign
In a “blitzkrieg”- like search on Wednesday morning, February 2, law enforcement officers walked on the doorsteps of the glamorous houses of some 14 former deputies, “senior party switchers” some of whom have been members of four different parties in just over six years.The deputies “visited” by Moldovan prosecutors and intelligence officers are some of Vladimir Voronin's defectors from the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM), drawn by “six figure sums” - as one of Voronin’s loyalist who resisted the temptation would later admit - to the Democratic Party of the now fugitive oligarch, Vlad Plahtoniuc. The charge filed by the prosecutors reads illicit enrichment.Bribing the communists was a major step in the process by means of which Plahotniuc’s despotic regime would seize the state institutions. Economically, what followed was non-stop stealing and plundering the state resources for the next almost four years. Public and even European money were systematically swallowed by Plahotniuc and his corporate-mafia system set up with a precision worthy of a famous gangster in an action movie. As usurpation of power was difficult for prosecutors to prove, they chose the “simplified version” of illicit enrichment, as it was easier to prove that the detainees could not have bought the million dollars-worth of properties and vehicles they owned out of their salaries as civil servants. Violeta Ivanov, Artur Reshetnikov, Sergiu Sirbu, Vladimir Vitiuc and Anatolie Zagorodniy were those taken in custody from among the 14 former communists searched, who the prosecutors suspect masterminded the negotiations.
The prosecutors acted more discretely than before, when the suspended Prosecutor General, Alexandr Stoianoglo, was picked up back in autumn. This time, the “show people” were those taken in custody.
The first to be arrested was Artur Reshetnikov, Voronin’s very own nephew and former head of the Intelligence and Security Service (SIS) during the violent crackdown on the anti-communist protests of April 7, 2009.
Thousands of young people were beaten and abused in various police precincts across Chisinau, including by order of Reshetnikov. However, Reshetnikov- who was a major pawn in the process of seizing the state institutions during two abusive regimes, led by Voronin and Plahotniuc respectively, says today that he is only a political victim, even if he is no longer a politician, of President Maia Sandu’s revenge, whom he described as a “state-destroying monster”.
Reshetnikov was picked up from a sumptuous two-story villa in a select neighborhood of Chisinau, even though his 2019 wealth statement , the last he submitted as a dignitary, mentions a104-square-meter apartment with a value estimated to be two and a half times lower than that of the Range Rover worth 1.5 million lei (about 75,000 euros) that the former head of SIS mentioned in the same statement.
Another attempt to win the public was made by Sergiu Sirbu, a young politician looking more like a shy accountant rather than the expert in the legal schemes that have drained the Republic of Moldova of all its resources in the last decade. Trained at Voronin's communist school, hardened during Plahotniuc's time and then fine-tuned during the Igor Dodon-Ilan Șor tandem rule, Serghei Sirbu resorted to an even more tear-jerking method to make himself look like a victim and win judge’s mercy. “Here is my wealth! If she is illicit, I am ready to go to prison, but I will not give her up. All the rest is just preposterous accusations”, Sirbu said waving a drawing of his daughter, while being led by masked men to the courtroom last Friday. Like Reshetnikov, Sirbu was a civil servant all his life. In 2021 he stated in documents that he owned a 104 square meter house, a 200 sq. m. apartment and another 68 sq m. apartment, donated either by his brother, a photographer, or other relatives.Sirbu also had three commercial premises, the largest of 644 square meters, also donated, three other unspecified pieces of real estate, and six plots of land, as well as a BMW X5 car, worth some 43,000 euros. And all this from earnings in the first seven months of 2021 of a little over 9,000 euros, from his activities as MP and lawyer, and dividends of a similar value from his wife’s company.
Between pleading for reform and the system’s resistance
Some political analysts in Chisinau have said that prosecutors should not only target communist party-switchers, but also those who left the Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova (PLDM), of the former Prime Minister Vlad Filat, and those from the Liberal Party, led at the time by the former interim president, Mihai Ghimpu. They too strengthened the majority of Vlad Plahotniuc's Democratic Party. Otherwise, it might look like a political vendetta, and this could harm the ruling Action and Solidarity Party, PAS.Beyond that, there is a feeling that prosecutors cannot - or will not - keep up with the ruling party's desire to reform. Relevant in this regard is the case of the suspended Attorney General Stoianoglo, stalling for several months now, although he is faced with no less than five charges in the case.The more time passes and dust settles on this file, the more public opinion will lose trust in PAS and President Maia Sandu, not in the prosecutors whom they never believed would change or reform anything anyway. In fact, no late than last Wednesday, on the day the party-switching deputies were detained, the chairman of the National Security, Defense and Public Order Commission, Lilian Carp, stated that Sergiu Sîrbu had warned his colleague, Artur Reshetnikov, that his house was to be searched, based on information “leaked” from the Prosecutor's Office.“Today, another accusation has been added, that he had announced Artur Reshetnikov yesterday evening that searches would be conducted and he should clean his house. There are leaks from the Prosecutor's Office and law enforcement that there might be searches or arrests of former or current civil servants. It’s no secret.”, Carp said.
However, the PAS government is aware of the problems in the system and is trying to reform it.
Last Tuesday, a day before the searches, President Maia Sandu submitted to Parliament a bill aimed at modifying the mechanism of extended confiscation of assets gained through acts of corruption. More specifically, the confiscation of illegal assets could also be extended to third parties that corrupt politicians and dignitaries may have transferred their assets to. “Our efforts to improve the legislation on fighting corruption will continue. The efforts to reform the judiciary will continue so that the legal norms are applied for everyone, with no exception”, Maia Sandu said about her initiative.The strategy of the current government also includes cleaning up the system of corrupt judges and prosecutors and the network they have formed to protect themselves. An example in this sense is the case of the journalist Julieta Savitschy, targeted by a criminal investigation after she published information about the assets that a prosecutor was artificially trying to pass on to his wife from whom he had fictitiously divorced.Thus, in order to break this whirlwind of corruption perfected in the 30 years since the independence of the Republic of Moldova from the USSR was proclaimed, an extraordinary (external) evaluation, also known as vetting, will be carried out by the current government in two stages. In brief, in the first phase the pre-vetting action is to be implemented. In this stage, 15 members of the Supreme Council of Magistrates (SCM) and the Superior Council of Prosecutors (CSP) will be elected, based on their professional qualifications.The procedure is expected to be completed this spring by six members who will form an evaluation committee. Three of them will be appointed by Parliament (two from the ruling party and one from the opposition) and three will be experts from abroad with expertise in such processes. The vetting procedure, i.e. the actual evaluation of magistrates (judges and prosecutors), should start this autumn.In a positive scenario, almost 1,000 Moldovan magistrates should run the gauntlet of this integrity assessment in a two-year timeframe. In the meantime, the government must also solve the training of new magistrates to replace those who will not pass the integrity test. A solution could come from Romania and the National Institute of Magistracy in Bucharest. The considerations are simple: the common language and the logistical aspects that could be facilitated by the Romanian state and with help from the EU.
The reform of the judiciary, a slow and difficult process
Albania, a state of similar size and faced with issues of endemic corruption similar to those of the Republic of Moldova, is an example of how complicated this evaluation process really is, a process that Tirana started back in 2017. So far, about 500 magistrates from a total of just over 800 have been checked. Of them, 190 have not passed the integrity test, and about 70 have resigned from the system. As a percentage, they would account for a little over half those checked in almost five years.Therefore, it is hard to believe that during this legislative term in the Republic of Moldova PAS will succeed in carrying through the vetting process. It will have to either speed up the procedures or continue it as it is, but by no means with a majority of 63 mandates out of 101 as PAS currently has, in a winning post 2025 scenario, provided early parliamentary elections are not held in the meantime.
