The deputy of the Shor Party, Marina Tauber, was placed under preventive arrest for 30 days, according to the decision of the Chisinau Court, Ciocana seat, taken at the request of prosecutors. She will be detained in Penitentiary No. 13, said the prosecutor handling the case.

The prosecutor said there was a risk that Marina Tauber would commit further crimes. The search of the Shor Party revealed that the operating system had been reinstalled on her and other computers in the party’s headquarters, and that other people targeted in the case had left the territory of Moldova.

As she left the courtroom, Marina Tauber launched accusations against the current government and President Maia Sandu, saying her case was politically motivated.

“Maia Sandu has given instructions, personally,” the Shor Party MP said.

The MP’s lawyer, Iulian Balan, said that no document presented in court by prosecutors concerns Marina Tauber and that her name does not appear in any document. He said he would challenge the decision in appeal court.

The MP was stripped of her parliamentary immunity on Thursday 21 July and detained for 72 hours after National Anti-Corruption Centre (NAC) officers and anti-corruption prosecutors raided her parliamentary office.

Marina Tauber is the subject of two criminal cases brought against her for “knowingly accepting party funding from an organised criminal group”, and charges were brought against her today.

Tauber described the lifting of her parliamentary immunity as a “political decision that has already been taken”. The party vice-president declared herself innocent and said she feared nothing, “neither arrests nor searches”.

Acting Prosecutor General Dumitru Robu said that the “ȘOR” political party had paid $260,000 to bring Russian performers Filip Kirkorov and Alisher Tagirovich Morgenshtern to Chisinau for the concert in the Grand National Assembly Square (PMAN) on 19 June, which never took place.

The head of state, Maia Sandu, says she wants the investigation into the illegal financing of the “ȘOR” political party to be “fair, transparent and not raise any questions”.
The head of state, Maia Sandu, says she wants the investigation into the illegal financing of the “ȘOR” political party to be “fair, transparent and not to raise questions”.

“I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone that this political party is illegally financing itself from obscure and undeclared sources. Finally, the state institutions have started this file and started investigating this phenomenon, because we have been talking about it for a very long time in relation to many political parties. Now, of course, those who are targeted probably find it easier to victimise themselves and look elsewhere for culprits, rather than explain where the money came from and why they did not report it. “, said president Maia Sandu on the TVR Moldova’s TV show Punctul pe Azi.

Marina Tauber is the vice-president of the “ȘOR” party. Earlier, Ziarul de Gardă wrote that before joining the legislature, Tauber served as mayor of Jora de Mijloc commune for almost a year. Until 2016, before entering politics, she was the president of the Moldovan Tennis Federation for six years. Ilan Shor’s former schoolmate is listed in both Kroll reports on the theft of billions from the three banks. According to the report, Tauber, along with other Unibank shareholders, allegedly acted in concert to benefit Ilan Shor.

Marina Tauber also lost her parliamentary immunity in 2019, as she was investigated for allegedly “aiding and abetting the fraud of the banking system”. Tauber was detained, but a year later, she was removed from prosecution on the grounds that the facts did not meet the elements of the crimes charged.

In 2020, Tauber’s wealth was the pretext for two complaints to ANI and the Public Prosecutor’s Office. At the time, the author of the petition, former socialist MP Marina Radvan, said that the data in Tauber’s wealth declarations raised doubts.