Adriana Betisor could become a lawyer. The magistrates of the Chisinau Court oblige the UAM to issue a decision on the prosecutor who handled the Filat case

Adriana Betisor, the former deputy head of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (PA), could get a lawyer’s license. This after a magistrate of the Chisinau Court, Râșcani seat, annulled a decision of the Commission for the licensing of the legal profession in 2022 and obliges the Union of Lawyers of Moldova (UAM), through the Commission, to issue a decision on the former prosecutor’s admission to the legal profession.

The decision of the Chisinau Court was delivered by Judge Victor Sîrbu, but the decision is subject to appeal to the Chisinau Court of Appeal within 30 days from the date of delivery of the decision.

Thus, Judge Victor Sîrbu admitted the application filed by Adriana Bețișor against the UAM regarding the “order of the public authority to issue a favourable individual administrative act” and annulled the decision of the Commission for the licensing of the legal profession of 8 February 2022, by which the former prosecutor was rejected the application for admission to the legal profession and the application for the issuance of a lawyer’s license.

“The Union of Lawyers of the Republic of Moldova, through the Commission for the licensing of the legal profession, is obliged to issue in respect of Bețișor Adriana a favourable individual administrative act, namely – a decision on admission to the legal profession with the issuance of the license to practice the legal profession, in accordance with the provisions of Article 10 para. (2) of the Law no. 1260 of 19 July 2002 on lawyers”, the magistrates’ decision states.

In 2021, the former deputy head of the PA Adriana Betisor submitted a request to the Commission for the licensing of the legal profession at the UAM, requesting admission to the legal profession, as well as a preliminary request for the issuance of a license to practice law. However, both applications were rejected by the members of the Commission: “Noting the lack of legal grounds for admission to the legal profession without passing the qualification examination, the Commission for the licensing of the legal profession orders the rejection of the applications as unfounded”. Subsequently, Betisor appealed the Commission’s decision to the Chisinau Court of Appeals, Râșcani seat.

Adriana Betisor is the former prosecutor who handled several high-profile cases, such as “Bank Fraud”, as well as the criminal case in which former Prime Minister Vladimir Filat was sentenced to 9 years in prison, following a complaint filed by former MP Ilan Shor.

She was appointed as a prosecutor in the PA in June 2011, by order of the then Prosecutor General Valeriu Zubco, and on 6 August 2019, she applied for release from the prosecution bodies for “personal reasons”.

ZdG previously wrote about the Betisor family’s “house of millions”.

In September 2021, the Prosecutor General’s Office (PG) announced that Adriana Betisor would appear in the dock on three charges: passive corruption in particularly large proportions, abuse of office and interference in the administration of justice. According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the criminal acts were committed in 2018, when Adriana Betisor, acting as a prosecutor, allegedly demanded 50 thousand euros from a convicted person. In exchange for this amount, the prosecutor was going to reclassify his actions and withdraw the charges in the case then pending at the Chisinau Court of Appeal in which he had been sentenced to 12 years in prison for attempted embezzlement of foreign assets and money laundering, both committed in particularly large proportions.