Magistrates of the Chisinau Court of Appeal have extended the house arrest for another 20 days for “Shor” Party deputy Marina Tauber

“Sor” Party deputy Marina Tauber, targeted in two criminal cases filed on “knowingly accepting party funding from an organized criminal group” and falsifying the party’s financial management report, remains under house arrest for another 20 days. The decision was taken on Tuesday, 6 December, by the judges of the Chisinau Court of Appeal, who rejected the appeals of the lawyers and prosecutors and upheld the decision of the Chisinau Ciocana court of 23 November.

The information was provided to Ziarul de Gardă by the press service of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office (PA).

On November 23, the house arrest warrant against Tauber was extended for 20 days.

On 18 October, Marina Tauber was released from house arrest and placed under judicial control for 30 days. The decision was handed down by the magistrates of the Ciocana court in Chisinau, who partially accepted the prosecutors’ request.

Subsequently, the prosecutor appealed to the Chisinau Court of Appeal against the court’s decision to provisionally release Tauber under judicial supervision.

In July 2022, anti-corruption prosecutors together with officers of the National Anti-Corruption Center (CNA), conducted several searches in the criminal case on illegal financing of the “Sor” political party. At the time, the CNA announced that in the first half of this year, the “Shor” political party had made payments of 600,000 euros, while reported expenditure was just over 228,000 lei.

According to the evidence on 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. According to the NAC, the money of the “criminal group” arrived in Moldova in the form of transfers and conversions, including in cryptocurrency, and various financing channels such as Dubai, Vienna and Monaco were used to disguise the origin of the funds.

Also in July, the former acting Prosecutor General Dumitru Robu submitted two requests to Parliament to waive the immunity of MP Marina Tauber.

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

On 23 July, Marina Tauber was remanded in custody for 30 days in the 13th Prison in the capital. On 16 August, magistrates extended the arrest warrant for Marina Tauber for another 20 days in penitentiary no. 13. She was subsequently placed under house arrest and the measure was extended several times.

Marina Tauber is the vice-president of the “Shor” party. Earlier, ZdG wrote that Tauber served as mayor of Jora de Mijloc for almost a year before entering the legislature. Until 2016, before entering politics, she was the president of the Moldovan Tennis Federation for six years. Ilan Shor’s former schoolmate is listed in both Kroll reports on the theft of the billion from the three banks. According to the report, Tauber, along with other Unibank shareholders, allegedly acted in concert to benefit Ilan Shor.

In 2020, Tauber’s wealth was the pretext for two complaints to the ANI and the PG. At the time, the author of the petition, former Socialist MP Marina Radvan, said that the data in Marina Tauber’s asset declarations raised doubts.