{"id":42506,"date":"2021-06-21T15:08:11","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T13:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libmod.de\/input-paper-fighting-corruption-ukraine-ryzhenko-copy\/"},"modified":"2021-07-09T14:46:47","modified_gmt":"2021-07-09T12:46:47","slug":"input-paper-overview-current-situation-challenges-fight-corruption-republic-of-moldova-guzun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libmod.de\/en\/input-paper-overview-current-situation-challenges-fight-corruption-republic-of-moldova-guzun\/","title":{"rendered":"Input Paper \u201cOverview of the current situation and challenges of the fight against corruption in the Republic of Moldova\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Foto: Shutter\u00adstock, Alexey Struyskiy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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As part of our project \u201cEastern Partnership Plus\u201d, we are publishing a first series of input papers on the topic of anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. The authors from the region (Kateryna Ryzhenko, Ion Guzun, Sandro Kevkhishvili) analyse the role of the European Union in supporting the fight against corruption and formulate their political recom\u00admen\u00adda\u00adtions for decision-makers in Berlin and Brussels.<\/h2>\n

By Ion Guzun, Attorney at Law<\/h3>\n

Overview of the current situation and challenges of the fight against corruption <\/strong><\/p>\n

On 8 June 2019, Moldova\u2019s Parliament adopted a decla\u00adration recog\u00adnizing that the state had been captured by the oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc and the Democ\u00adratic Party of Moldova (PDM) under his leadership. That same day, the two parties of the ACUM Bloc and the Party of the Socialists entered into an unlikely agreement to form a new coalition government with ACUM\u2019s Maia Sandhu as prime minister. The newly estab\u00adlished government undertook to inves\u00adtigate corruption schemes and illicit financial flows, fight corruption and reform the judiciary. Feeling threatened by the revolu\u00adtionary measures taken by the Sandu Government to remove political influence from the judiciary and Prose\u00adcutor General\u2019s Office, the PSRM toppled the government five months after its appointment. The succeeding PSRM-led coalition government under Ion Chicu stalled the judicial reforms and the anti-corruption measures, while the Socialists focused on re-building the Plahotniuc style power vertical.<\/p>\n

The appointment of a new Prose\u00adcutor General in November 2019 did not bring the expected break\u00adthrough in the inves\u00adti\u00adgation of high-profile corruption cases, such as the banking fraud and Laundromat money-laundering scheme. On the contrary, the Prose\u00adcutor General\u2019s Office released from prison or freed from criminal inves\u00adti\u00adgation multiple individuals involved in money laundering and the billion-dollar banking fraud, among them the contro\u00adversial businessman Veaceslav Platon, two Shor Party MPs who figure in the Kroll reports[1]<\/a> and Vlad Filat,[2]<\/a> the former prime minister. The Prose\u00adcutor General\u2019s Office refused to launch an official inves\u00adti\u00adgation into the alleged bribery of then President Igor Dodon, even after a video leaked in the summer of 2020 showing Igor Dodon taking a plastic bag from the oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc in 2019 had gone viral.[3]<\/a> Another inves\u00adti\u00adgation into bribery among MPs launched in 2020 has been also stalled.<\/p>\n

Although Moldova has made some progress, such as amend\u00adments to the legis\u00adlation on sanctions of criminal offenses and improving policy documents and proce\u00addures on money laundering, these achieve\u00adments were made possible largely thanks to the external pressure exerted via the condi\u00adtion\u00adality mechanism attached to the EU macro-financial assis\u00adtance, and far less due the existence of any genuine political will on the part of the incumbent government. No progress has yet been made towards strength\u00adening the anti-corruption insti\u00adtu\u00adtions by narrowing the compe\u00adtences (and thus sharp\u00adening the focus) of the specialized Anti-corruption Prosecutor\u2019s Office (APO).<\/p>\n

Anti-corruption reforms: main achievement and failures <\/strong><\/p>\n

Moldova has adopted a string of various anti-corruption strategies and action plans since gaining its indepen\u00addence. The latest National Integrity and Anticor\u00adruption Strategy expired in 2020, but only 50 (39%) of its 127 measures had been imple\u00admented by mid-2020, though another 20% had been partially imple\u00admented.[4]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The latest Strategy and the Action Plan for ensuring the indepen\u00addence and the integrity of the justice sector for 2021\u20132024, adopted by the PSRM-Sor Party coalition in late 2020, was due to go into effect as of 1 January 2021. On 17 February 2021, President Maia Sandu returned the justice sector strategy to the Parliament for further review, requesting the imple\u00admen\u00adtation of the mechanism of the external evalu\u00adation of judges, that the assets and interest disclo\u00adsures submitted by judges and prose\u00adcutors be subject to effective review and that the Consti\u00adtution be amended to allow for the confis\u00adcation of assets\/\u200b wealth owned by public servants in the absence of justi\u00adfi\u00adcation. Parliament did not re-examine the justice sector strategy before 28 April 2021 (when the presi\u00addential decree dissolving parliament was signed).<\/p>\n

The verifi\u00adcation of asset reporting is proceeding very slowly, and priority seems to be given to conflicts of interest, which are of less complexity. Unfor\u00adtu\u00adnately, the integrity inspectors perform only super\u00adficial checks on the asset and interest state\u00adments submitted, limiting these only to form and content and do not compile all the infor\u00admation from previous years or inves\u00adtigate discrep\u00adancies revealed in this way. As of the time of writing, of 11 inves\u00adti\u00adga\u00adtions initiated to check assets, four cases citing the unjus\u00adtified property have been sent to court. The National Integrity Authority (NIA) needs to amend the rules governing the verifi\u00adcation of asset and interest state\u00adments, ensure their effective imple\u00admen\u00adtation with respect to the disclo\u00adsures of all high-level actors and ensure the timely publi\u00adcation of results of these investigations.<\/p>\n

Since 2016, the e\u2011integrity system has been available for online filing and verifi\u00adcation of asset and interest state\u00adments. Automated cross-checking is extremely important for the effective verifi\u00adcation of such state\u00adments. NIA failed to implement this mechanism, although the donor community has expressed its readiness to support the improvement thereof, subject to a prior audit of its functioning.<\/p>\n

Amend\u00adments to the Criminal Code tough\u00adening the sanctions for corruption offenses entered into force in October 2020. The new legal framework, aimed at combatting corruption by improving effec\u00adtiveness in the criminal inves\u00adti\u00adgation phase, will provide for the possi\u00adbility of criminal prose\u00adcution bodies with additional proce\u00addural tools. Also, the term of impris\u00adonment for corruption has been increased to 8 years.<\/p>\n

The Anti-corruption Prosecutor\u2019s Office (APO) of the Republic of Moldova was created to fight high-level corruption. However, it devotes signif\u00adicant efforts to cases involving small-scale corruption. Thus, restricting the mandate of the APO to cases of high-level corruption would help its prose\u00adcutors to focus on the cases of high-level corruption; such inves\u00adti\u00adga\u00adtions require increased guarantees of indepen\u00addence as well as special methods and means of inves\u00adti\u00adgation due to the complexity of the cases and interests involved. Such a mandate justifies the mainte\u00adnance of a specialized body with a special status.[5]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

In 2020, no high-ranking Moldovan officials were sentenced for corruption. On the contrary, judges postponed signif\u00adicant cases or released suspects under inves\u00adti\u00adgation, and prose\u00adcutors have been stalling with respect to the proper inves\u00adti\u00adgation of substan\u00adtiated allega\u00adtions of corruption. For instance, Oleg Stern\u00adioal\u0103, a Supreme Court Judge, was detained in November 2019 in a criminal inves\u00adti\u00adgation on suspicion of large-scale money laundering and illicit enrichment to the tune of about EUR 320,000, the discrepancy between the suspect\u2019s income and his expen\u00addi\u00adtures. More than a year later, the case has still not been sent to court. Mr. Stern\u00adioal\u0103 resigned from the court, but is a practicing attorney. In June 2020, the Chi\u0219in\u0103u Appellate Court issued an order to cease criminal proceedings against two individuals caught in flagrante delicto<\/em> trying to send, through third-parties, USD 250,000 to members of parliament in March 2014. This was the first case involving high-level corruption of MPs.<\/p>\n

In September 2019, the APO withdrew the charges against 14 former and current judges accused of money laundering in the \u201cLaundromat\u201d case, on the grounds that the elements of the offense could not be estab\u00adlished. In late October 2020, the Superior Council of Magis\u00adtracy accepted the requests of five magis\u00adtrates to be reinstated in the positions they had held until 2016, when they became subjects of criminal prose\u00adcution, and ordered that they receive back pay for the period in which they were suspended from acting as judge.<\/p>\n

The draft amend\u00adments which would provide for an extension the anticor\u00adruption strategy until 2022 are still awaiting a decision by Parliament. Based on judicial statistics, the National Anticor\u00adruption Centre, NAC claims that the courts issue sentences involving \u201creal\u201d impris\u00adonment in no more than 16% of all corruption cases, and issue fines in 71% of them.[6]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s role in supporting the fight against corruption<\/strong><\/p>\n

The fight against corruption has been a constant priority in the EU-Moldova dialogue and consti\u00adtutes an important part of the EU-Moldova Associ\u00adation Agreement (AA), signed in 2014. The two Associ\u00adation Agendas produced by the Associ\u00adation Agreement set out a clear area of actions in the field of rule of law, among them the compre\u00adhensive reform of the prose\u00adcution and the justice sector, actions to advance the fight against corruption, especially high-level corruption, and to strengthen the indepen\u00addence and function\u00adality of the existing anti-corruption insti\u00adtu\u00adtions (the National Anticor\u00adruption Centre and the NIA). The second Associ\u00adation Agenda for 2017\u20132019,[7]<\/a> which was approved after the one-billion banking theft came to light, defined a more extensive and detailed list of anti-corruption and anti-money laundering measures.<\/p>\n

Before 2018, the European Union had not allocated funding to support rule-of-law measures within the framework of the European Neigh\u00adbourhood Instrument (ENI). The first ENI-funded programme aimed at strength\u00adening the rule of law and anti-corruption mecha\u00adnisms was launched in 2018,[8]<\/a> with a budget of EUR 8.5 million.<\/p>\n

In December 2020, The European Commission approved the disbursement of EUR 5 million in budget support assis\u00adtance to help the delivery of reforms in the police sector in the Republic of Moldova. This new payment comes in the wake of the second instalment of the now expired Macro-Financial Assis\u00adtance programme in July (EUR 30 million), and the first instalment (EUR 50 million) of the emergency Macro-Financial Assis\u00adtance programme, disbursed in November.[9]<\/a> It encom\u00adpasses important anti-corruption and anti-money laundering compo\u00adnents vis-\u00e0-vis the Ministry of Interior and the police.[10]<\/a><\/p>\n

The Joint EU\/\u200bCoE Project Controlling Corruption through Law Enforcement and Prevention (CLEP) started on 1 June 2017, with a duration of 36 months and a budge of EUR 2.2 million.[11]<\/a> In addition, the EU initiated a million-euro Twinning project with the NAC in September 2017, aimed at strength\u00adening the insti\u00adtu\u00adtional capac\u00adities of the NAC, APO, Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), General Police Inspec\u00adtorate (GPI) and Customs Service, and thus increasing their effec\u00adtiveness in the fight against corruption.[12]<\/a><\/p>\n

The current High Level Advisor\u2019s Mission provides expertise on combatting corruption and money laundering. This is not the only support that the European Union, the Council of Europe, and the other donors provide to assist Moldova in the fight against corruption and money laundering.<\/p>\n

Main conclusion and recom\u00admen\u00adda\u00adtions as to how the EU could effec\u00adtively support anti-corruption reforms <\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/strong>Conclu\u00adsions<\/strong><\/p>\n