Justice Minister Sergiu Litvinenco announces that he will refer the case to the Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the circumstances described in the ECHR judgment on the case Theo National Construct vs. Republic of Moldova

“The ECtHR concluded that the judgments adopted by Moldovan judges were abusive. The ECtHR described in detail how the materials of a case were manipulated in order to make it possible to adopt a judicial solution in favour of a person. As a result of this abuse, Moldova risks having to pay millions of euros in damages.

Interestingly, the ECtHR judgment was adopted by unanimous vote, i.e. none of the 7 ECtHR judges had any doubts about the text of the judgment, which implicitly confirms how obvious the abuse was. Given the unanimous vote in favour of the judgment, I do not think that challenging it has a chance of success,” reads the post on the Minister of Justice’s Facebook page.

Sergiu Litvinenco also states that he “hopes that prosecutors will examine the involvement of both the former politician and all the judges who adopted the decisions, as well as other people involved”.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) delivered a judgment on the merits of the case of Theo National Construct LTD v. Republic of Moldova on Tuesday 11 October. The Court concluded that the proceedings in which decisions were taken concerning the Romanian-based applicant company, whose core business is the construction and repair of roads, were conducted in an arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable manner, according to a summary by the Government Agent Directorate of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Moldova.

Vladislav Gribincea, president of the Moldovan Legal Resource Centre and a lawyer representing the company, said the court had “delivered one of the harshest rulings I have ever read”.

“The Romanian company sent the Moldovan company road construction equipment worth more than one million euros. Subsequently, the Moldovan company was awarded a contract for road construction worth over 20 million euros. The equipment sent by the Romanian company was pledged to a bank in order to obtain cash for road construction. Also, the founder of the Romanian company guaranteed the loans taken by the Moldovan company by pledging his house, valued at 400 thousand euros (…). In other words, the Romanian company was left without equipment, without a share in the company and without any compensation, and the founder of the Romanian company – without a house. In this case the state will pay (it is certain that the compensation cannot be less than the value of the equipment) millions of euros,” reads a post on the lawyer’s Facebook page.

Vladislav Gribincea claims that “the arbitrary decision was pronounced by the president of the Civil and Administrative Court of Appeal of the Chisinau Court of Appeal, who would have distributed the file himself”.

According to a statement made by the general director of “Theo National Construct” LTD, Toader Golovatiuc, in 2011, the judge of the Court of Appeal who delivered the decision is Gheorghe Cretu.

“The day after the ruling of the Chisinau Court of Appeal, we contacted Mr. Cretu’s clerk in order to get a copy of the reasoned judgment or at least the operative part. We were told that the device is not ready and the reasoned judgment will be within the legal deadline.

It was only after we submitted a written request to the Court of Appeal Registry on 09.02.2011 that we received a simple copy of the operative part. On the device was the signature of the representative of “Șel and C” LTD as if he had received a copy on the very day the judgment was issued.

The question arises, what was the interest of withholding the issuance of the device and if Judge Gheorghe Cretu, in order not to damage the interests of “Șel and C” LTD ordered the immediate execution – why is he not so operative when it comes to the rights of SC “Theo National Construct” LTD?”, said in 2011, for IPN, the general director of “Theo National Construct” LTD, Toader Golovatiuc.

According to the Moldovan representation to the ECHR, in 2007, the applicant company agreed with Moldovan businessman and chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Moldova (PSD) Victor Selin (Ș) to invest in road construction on the Moldovan market. As a result, she was admitted as a partner in the limited liability company Quadro-Desing Plus (Q), later renamed “Ecodrum Construct” SRL, contributing a 50% stake in the share capital.

“The case concerns the hostile takeover of the plaintiff company in 2011 by one of the associates who was controlled by S., as well as the alleged illegal deprivation of the plaintiff company of its assets with the involvement of the courts and law enforcement agencies in a “raider attack”, the summary of the judgment which was carried out by the Government Agent Directorate reads.

Before the court, Theo National Construct complained that it had been the victim of a “raider attack” and that, by the way it had been excluded from the list of associates of the company Q., it had in fact been deprived of its assets, contrary to Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

As regards the complaint of the respondent company concerning its wrongful exclusion from the list of Q.’s shareholders, the Court held that this constituted an extralegal measure, contrary to the provisions of Article 47 of the Limited Liability Companies Act in force at the time of the events.

“The Court also observed that the request of the associate of company Q. for the exclusion of the applicant company from the list of associates was never brought to the attention of the applicant company. In any event, the national file contains no evidence that the applicant had ever been provided with a copy of that request.

Although the minutes of the hearing of 22 December 2010 indicated that this application had been made for the first time on that date and that the applicant had been asked to provide a reference to it by the next hearing, the authenticity and reliability of those minutes was a matter of serious concern to the Court. In that regard, the Court noted that the minutes not only referred to a file number which was not yet available on 22 December 2010, but that that hearing had apparently been adjourned by a decision of the same judge the day before,” the summary of the judgment reads.

In the same vein, the Court found that the minutes of the hearing of 20 January 2011 also showed signs of falsification. Similarly, the Court noted the different dates of the delivery of the judgment of 2 February 2011, the extreme speed of the execution of that judgment and the involvement of a person close to Selin in the process.

The Court also noted that, although the applicant company had invoked all the inadequacies and omissions in question in its appeal, the Supreme Court of Justice did not respond in any way to the very serious allegations concerning the abuses committed at the stage of the proceedings before the Chisinau Court of Appeal, nor did it mention them in its decision of 20 May 2011.

Consequently, the Court concluded that the proceedings in which these decisions were adopted were conducted in an arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable manner.