Moldova’s Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and National Anti-Corruption Centre will be reorganised and replaced by the National Anti-Corruption Directorate – a structure similar to Romania’s DNA, Deutsche Welle reports.

President Maia Sandu’s initiative to create an Anti-Corruption Court – a specialised court with 15 judges who will only examine cases of grand corruption and corruption in the justice system – will also soon enter the legislative procedure. The draft is now at the public consultation stage.

Boomerang effect on the corrupt in the system

The process of merging the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (PA) and the National Anti-Corruption Centre (NAC) has been boosted by an attempt by corrupt PA prosecutors to block their expulsion from the system (and possible arrest) by leaking an audio printout of an internal meeting at which the head of the institution, Veronica Dragalin, harshly threatened them with arrest for selling information from files to wanted organised crime bosses. The row inside the PA erupted immediately after another bruising dispute – this time between the NAC and the PA.

As a result, the government has decided to expedite the expulsion from the system of prosecutors and anti-corruption officers who enabled oligarchs’ debauchery between 2014 and 2019, including the laundering of tens of billions of dollars through Moldovan banks and the theft of $1 billion from the country’s banking system. The corrupt’s attempt to preserve themselves in the system and undermine the effort to purify the anti-corruption institutions through an extraordinary external evaluation of the integrity of all prosecutors is prompting the government to merge the NAC and the PA (by creating the DNA) and thus simultaneously get rid of all employees of the two institutions who have served oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc and continue to serve organized crime groups remotely managed by the fugitives of plundered Moldova.

Maia Sandu: “The time has come to make a decision”

Details of the new structure (DNA) are not yet known. The idea of merging the NAC and the PA belongs to the head of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, Veronica Dragalin, and President Maia Sandu confirmed in a TV interview on Thursday that the government will go for this scenario. “We will soon put an end to the dispute between the NAC and the PA. This public debate between the heads of the two institutions is not good for the reform and the fight against corruption. So we will come up with a solution,” the head of state said. Asked if the creation of DNA is the solution the government is considering, Maia Sandu replied, “It is the solution we are discussing and it is time to make a decision.”

The information about the merger of the PA and CNA by creating DNA was confirmed on Thursday by PAS MP Andrian Cheptonar: “I know that Mrs Dragalin knows very well who and what she represents in the PA system, she knows who are those toxic people who must be removed from the system. We now have all the tools to be able to know who and what they represent and what they did in the system. According to the head of the PA, the easiest way would be to reform the PA by merging it with the NAC and create DNA. It will be a complex reform. But we are not operating under normal conditions now. We see that the system is resisting. We have found ourselves facing a deeply rotten system. What we are seeing today – these leaks from inside the PA – are the last gasps of this rotten system, because justice reform will continue,” Cheptonar said.

All will go through the integrity filter

According to unofficial information obtained by DW, only prosecutors and investigative officers who have passed the external and extraordinary integrity assessment will work in DNA-Moldova. The information was indirectly confirmed by Maia Sandu, who said that the integrity assessment of all those at the NAC and PA is absolutely necessary in the coming period. And PAS MP Andrian Cheptonar said that many corrupt prosecutors are already sitting with their resignation applications written in the drawer and that they will leave voluntarily, because failure to pass the integrity test will deprive them of all social benefits (special pensions, allowances, etc.).

So far, all candidates for the SCM have passed the extraordinary external evaluation. The pre-vetting commission, including foreign judges, has been extremely tough. Only eight out of 40 judicial and non-judicial candidates for the SCM passed the evaluation. Now the integrity assessment of candidates for the Superior Council of Prosecutors (SCP) – an equally tough filter – is taking place, and in parallel the external assessment of Supreme Court judges will begin, followed by those of appeal and first instance courts.

The corrupt still in the system – the ‘hail mary’ of the fugitive oligarchs

At the level of judges, attempts were also made to block the mechanism for expelling the corrupt from the system, including chain resignations at the SCJ, but eventually the new SCM became operational and judges from other courts were seconded to the SCJ to avoid blocking the system.

Corruption in the judiciary and prosecution system is the latest target of the oligarchs who looted Moldova between 2014 and 2019 and fled the country. Through people mounted in the system by kleptocrats, cases of grand corruption are now being prevented, thieves are still escaping from jail and requests for extradition of corrupt oligarchs to countries that harbour them are being deliberately flawed and rejected.