The state must pay former Prime Minister Vlad Filat €7,500 in moral damages. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) partially upheld the politician’s complaint about the lack of publicity in criminal proceedings on Tuesday 31 January.

“The Court finds that there has been a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention by reason of the lack of publicity in the applicant’s criminal proceedings,” reads the judgment issued on Tuesday.

Vlad Filat’s reaction to the ECtHR decision

After the publication of the ECtHR ruling, former Prime Minister Vlad Filat told a press conference that he had been waiting “for this moment for 7 years and 4 months”. “So much has happened since that plot took place, on 15 October 2015,” Filat said.

“The whole trial process until the conviction took exactly 8 months. (…) Detention, arrest and the so-called trial process that led to a conviction, which I have always considered unfair, based on an unfair trial, in violation of one of the most important principles of fair trial, which is the publicity of court hearings. (…) These secret hearings led to the violation of many fundamental human rights and freedoms”, said former Prime Minister Filat.

Vlad Filat has asked for €30,000 for the moral damage he believes he has suffered. He has also requested €8 400 for costs and expenses in court. The government argued that the amounts requested were unfounded and excessive.

The Court concluded that there had been a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, the right to a fair trial.

It held that it was not necessary to examine the admissibility and merits of the complaint based on Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (d) of the Convention concerning the alleged impossibility of attending the hearing of defence witnesses.

At the judicial stage, the trial and appeal courts, despite the applicant’s disagreement, granted the prosecutor’s request to hold the hearings in camera, on the grounds of avoiding prejudicing the prosecution of another case against the applicant, separate from the pending one, which concerned other charges of bribery and influence peddling in connection with massive fraud in the Moldovan banking system.

The judges pointed out that certain witnesses in the present case were also to be heard in the proceedings in the other case and that the minutes of the pending and separate cases contain or may in the future contain information and evidence which should be protected in the interests of justice.

At the same time, the trial court agreed to hear fourteen defence witnesses from a list of thirty suggested by the applicant. As some of these witnesses failed to appear, the court sent them summonses on several occasions. Subsequently, the court rejected the plaintiff’s request to call them by force. In the end, only seven defence witnesses appeared before the first instance and the appeal court. Twenty-eight prosecution witnesses were also heard.

The judicial process ended with the final decision of the Supreme Court of Justice of 22 February 2017. In particular, the Court declared inadmissible the appeals filed by the parties and confirmed the applicant’s nine-year prison sentence for passive corruption and influence peddling. The judges based their conviction on the statements of a well-known businessman, I.S., who had stated that he had bribed the applicant, on the statements of other people close to I.S., and on written evidence.

Relying on Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, the applicant complained about the lack of public hearings in his criminal case. Relying on Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (d) of the Convention, he also argued that the domestic courts had not taken effective measures to ensure the presence of defence witnesses and that the overall fairness of his criminal trial had been affected.

In the present case, the Court took into account the fact that the separate criminal prosecution, for which the hearings were held behind closed doors in the present trial, concerned massive fraud that undermined the Moldovan banking system. It was also unable to rule out the possibility that making public certain testimony, evidence or information might jeopardise the proper conduct of that investigation and that there might be a legitimate interest in preserving their confidentiality during the proceedings in the present case. However, the Court reiterated that the national judges had to limit the exclusion of the public from the trial to what was strictly necessary to achieve the objective pursued, i.e. the interests of justice. It pointed out that both the trial court and the court of appeal held closed hearings throughout the applicant’s criminal trial. However, those authorities gave reasons for that decision in a rather general manner, without giving even a few indications as to the testimony and other information whose confidentiality had to be preserved and without showing that those elements were relevant and essential to the present case and to the separate criminal proceedings.

The Court also noted that the national judges invoked the need to preserve the confidentiality of future evidence. In this regard, it reiterated that the theoretical possibility that confidential information might be examined at some point in the proceedings could not justify keeping the public in the dark throughout the proceedings (for comparison Kartoyev and Others, cited above, § 59). The Court noted that the national authorities did not consider taking measures to limit the effects of the lack of publicity, for example by limiting access only to the testimony and information in dispute and/or by holding certain hearings only behind closed doors.

In the light of the above, and even assuming that the other rights of defence had been respected, the Court held that it had not been established that the exclusion of the public from the applicant’s criminal trial before the trial and appeal courts was strictly necessary in the circumstances of the case. Furthermore, it held that the Supreme Court of Justice had ruled only on the admissibility of the appeals lodged by the parties, without hearing them, and that that court had in no way remedied the lack of publicity of the proceedings before the lower courts.

The applicant was represented before the Court by V. Munteanu and T. Osoianu.

ZdG reported in August 2017 when the law firm Popa and Associates announced that Vlad Filat had filed an application to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The decision to apply to the ECtHR was taken by Vlad Filat in the context of an unlawful conviction by Moldovan magistrates, says his lawyer Igor Popa.

In his application, Vlad Filat alleged that during the trial process, several of his rights guaranteed by the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms were violated. Vlad Filat complained of a violation of Article 3 of Protocol No 1 in relation to Article 13 of the Convention. Although he was elected to Parliament on the basis of democratic elections, the waiver of his immunity and the revocation of his mandate as a Member of Parliament were ordered in flagrant violation of domestic law, the application said.

The former MEP sought a declaration of violation of Article 6 of the Covenant, which provides for the right to a fair trial. In his application, Vlad Filat alleged violation of the principle of publicity of court hearings.

“I was the victim of a trial conducted in obscure, clandestine conditions, being denied the right to communicate with the media …. No evidence has been presented to show that my trial in public would harm the interests of justice,” the application states.