Deputies of the “ȘOR” Party and the Party of Communists claim to have submitted a letter of guarantee to the Court of Appeal on Monday, August 1, with the amount stipulated by law, transferred to the account of the Court of Appeal, as a personal guarantee for the release from detention of “ȘOR” deputy Marina Tauber. In the document, MPs claim to give assurances that Marina Tauber will not evade prosecution.

The letter was signed by Party of Communists MPs Vladimir Voronin, Oleg Reidman, Inga Sibova, Diana Caraman, Veaceslav Nigai, as well as Marina Tauber’s fellow “ȘOR” MPs Denis Ulanov, Petru Jardan, Reghina Apostolova and Vadim Fotescu.

“Pursuant to Article 179 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Republic of Moldova, the undersigned, Members of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova of the 11th legislature, hereby constitute the present personal guarantee in favour of the defendant Marina Tauber, undertaking that, by the authority we hold, to guarantee that the accused will comply with all the procedural obligations incumbent on him under the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Republic of Moldova, in particular to appear before the criminal prosecution and the court at every summons, to comply with the normal criminal proceedings and to find out the truth in this criminal case”, reads the letter to the Court of Appeal.

The MPs also wrote that the charges against Marina Tauber “are politically motivated, as her arrest is only one of many repressive actions against the parliamentary opposition”.

“We request the release from pre-trial detention of Marina Tauber, MP for the Republic of Moldova, with the application to her of a preventive measure in the form of a ‘personal guarantee’,” the address added.

In the meantime, the judges of the Court of Appeal are currently examining the appeal of Tauber’s lawyers against the decision of the first court to place Tauber in solitary confinement for 30 days. A protest in support of the “ȘOR” MP has also been organised in front of the Court of Appeal.

The deputy of the Shor Party, Marina Tauber, was placed in preventive detention for 30 days on 23 July, according to the decision of the Chisinau Ciocana court, taken at the request of the prosecutors. She is being held in Prison No. 13. Tauber, targeted in two criminal cases brought on the grounds of “knowingly accepting party funding from an organised criminal group”, was stripped of her parliamentary immunity on 21 July, after Parliament approved the two requests made by acting Prosecutor General Dumitru Robu.

Tauber described the lifting of parliamentary immunity as a “political decision that has already been taken”. The party’s vice-president declared herself innocent and said she was not afraid of anything, “neither of detentions nor of searches”.

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

At the same time, on July 21, National Anti-Corruption Centre and Intelligence and Security Service officers, together with anti-corruption prosecutors, raided several locations in the country in a case file on illegal financing of the “ȘOR” political party. According to the evidence in the file, it was found that the party had knowingly accepted money of dubious origin from a “criminal group”, which was used for party purposes, such as fees for artists, salaries for members and the organisation of protests.