The pre-vetting commission announced on Tuesday, October 18, the adoption of the decision on the non-promotion of the evaluation of the judge at the Chisinau Court of Appeal, Iurie Cotruță, following his withdrawal from the competition for the position of member of the Superior Council of Magistracy (CSM).

“The decision was brought to the attention of the candidate and the CSM, but cannot be published due to the candidate’s refusal to be made public,” reads the information note issued by the Independent Commission for the Evaluation of the Integrity of Candidates for Membership in the Self-Governing Bodies of Judges and Prosecutors.

A total of 23 candidates remained in the competition, three of whom were heard by the Commission on 7 October.

The first three candidates for membership of the SJC heard by the Pre-Vetting Committee. How they answer questions on their wealth and income: “I felt like I was at confession”

Iurie Cotruță has been a judge at the Chisinau CA for 10 years. He began his career in the field in 1989 as a consultant at the Chisinau Court of Appeals, Botanica sector.

Magistrate Cotruță is targeted in a 2018 DC ruling on a man’s claim that a 2010 ruling awarded him ownership of an apartment, but later found that seizures were applied to the apartment. The man applied to have the attachment lifted and the judge attached the application to the 2010 file. The disciplinary proceedings were subsequently terminated. Another disciplinary case against the magistrate was initiated in early 2021. Subsequently, the disciplinary proceedings were terminated. In the most recent complaint, Cotruță was accused that, together with two other colleagues of his at the Chisinau CA, he issued and maintained a court decision, accepting as “evidence” a list of acts issued by unconstitutional authorities on the left bank of the Dniester. The Legal Inspectorate rejected the complaint as unfounded, on the grounds that the facts exposed did not meet the elements constituting disciplinary misconduct capable of giving rise to disciplinary liability.

Cotruță, along with four other colleagues, was prosecuted in 2015, following the action of the former president of the CSJ, Mihai Poalelungi. The five were accused of having drafted the wrong text following a court case in which a decision was made that a father should not be deprived of his paternal rights, which showed the opposite. Inadvertently, according to them, the 5 judges signed the wrongly worded judgment. Later, after having been informed of the mistake, the five corrected their error, but they did so in absentia and without summoning the parties. Subsequently, in early 2016, the criminal case was closed.

Cotruță was part of the panel of judges that in November 2017 declared unfounded the appeal filed by the Associated Lawyers’ Office “Popa & Associates” and upheld the decision of the Chisinau Court rejecting the request for confirmation of the mediation settlement between lawyers and former premier Vladimir Filat in the mediation process. The value of the mediation settlement between Filat and his lawyers is 1.3 million euros, 100 thousand US dollars and 230 thousand US dollars.

According to the information posted on the page “Lawyers for Human Rights” a decision of the panel in which Judge Iurie Cotruță participated was subject to examination at the ECtHR. The case is “Macovei et al. v. Moldova”, in which the ECtHR found a violation of the right to a fair trial and ordered the state to pay 21 thousand euros.

In 2021 he donated an apartment

In his declaration of assets and personal interests for 2021, Cotruță indicates that he owns an apartment obtained by privatisation contract in 1991 and a BMW 520 car, manufactured in 1998 and purchased in 2007 for 50 thousand lei. Last year the judge donated an apartment, with an indicated value of 566 thousand lei. The magistrate keeps more than 583 thousand lei in bank accounts. Last year he declared salary income of 329 thousand lei.

28 candidates from among the judges registered for the competition for the position of member of the CSM. However, 24 of them reached the public hearing stage, after three judges withdrew from the competition and one magistrate did not submit a declaration of assets and personal interests for 5 years.

Ziarul de Gardă analysed the activity, wealth and integrity of each candidate and presents the most important information about the judges entered in the competition, who, in a first stage, will go through the integrity assessment procedure, in the context of the Pre-Vetting Law.