Petru Merineanu, the brother-in-law of former socialist president of Moldova Igor Dodon, who tried to swallow a receipt, remains in custody in Prison No. 13. Magistrates extended the pre-trial detention on August 19 for 20 days.

The information was confirmed to Ziarul de Gardă by prosecutor Mariana Cherpec, in charge of communication at the Prosecutor General’s Office (PG).

Anti-corruption prosecutors raided several locations belonging to the family of former Moldovan President Igor Dodon on 24 May. Also on Tuesday, Igor Dodon and one other person were detained for 72 hours, as large amounts of money and documents were discovered during the searches and Igor Dodon’s brother-in-law Petru Merineanu tried to destroy some evidence by swallowing it.

Then, at a press briefing, Elena Cazacov, interim head of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office (PA), said that one of the persons, at whose house the searches were carried out, tried to destroy the documents confirming the transactions with real estate exceeding 700 thousand euros. She did not provide a name.

On 24 May, the searches took place in Sadova, at Igor Dodon’s parental home and house in Chisinau, at the Sadova “Sadovo” leisure resort, at Molovata on the banks of the Dniester River, where Dodon’s family has invested in another leisure resort, at the headquarters of the foundations of the former socialist president of Moldova, including the headquarters of the Moldovan-Russian Business Union, where Dodon is president.

During the raids, prosecutors seized goods and money worth tens of millions of lei, and more than 600 thousand lei, 17 thousand euros and 1000 dollars were found in one of the locations searched.

Prosecutors also found a receipt showing that Igor Dodon’s wife had paid 25 thousand euros cash in August 2021 as a deposit for kitchen equipment. Ziarul de Gardă identified the person who signed this receipt. She provided us with details of the transaction. The trail leads to the ex-president’s brother-in-law, detained by prosecutors while swallowing a receipt, and to an all-inclusive resort on the Nistru River, purchased last summer.