Intimidation of the expert of Transparency International Moldova – Veaceslav Negruta, ex-Minister of Finance
Veaceslav Negruta, expert of Transparency International Moldova, has come under increasing pressure from the current government representatives. His former advisor was arrested two months ago and the law enforcement is putting pressure on him to testify against Mr. Negruta on a fabricated case related to a public bid for a contract with a company that issued passports.
(Below, please, also see the related Statement of the Secretariat of TI from Berlin on this case: https://www.transparency.org/news/pressrelease/anti_corruption_campaigners_in_moldova_must_not_be_intimidated)
Background information on Mr Negruta:
Veaceslav Negruta served as the Minister of Finance of Moldova in 2009-2013. While being part of the government, he noticed irregularities in the banking system some time before the USD 1 billion bank fraud took place. He required concrete measures from the Parliament in an open parliamentary session in April 2012 and in June 2012 to be adopted to prevent the irregularities, as well as from the Supreme Security Council of the President. He became an uncomfortable person for those who were planning the fraud, therefore several ways of removing him from the office were tried, including a staged car accident.
As these plans did not work, in July 2012 a criminal case against Mr. Negruta was opened with the case judge in the Court of Appeal being a brother in law of the main Moldovan oligarch. Even if the case was groundless, Mr. Negruta was convicted to three years in prison conventionally. In the meantime, Mr. Negruta resigned from his position as a protest against the developments in the banking system in Moldova and their expected replications on the financial system, keeping a strong stand on the financial system irregularities in Moldova.
More on the case, please, see here:
Latterly Mr. Negruta contested the decision of the national law court in the European Court for Human Rights.
Transparency International Moldova hired Mr. Negruta in 2016. He has been working on the Public Policies Observer that includes opinions on legal initiatives in the economic field that may damage the public interest. Within this activity, he raised, among others, the following issues:
– laundering of about USD 22 Billion via the corrupt justice sector of Moldova;
– USD 1 Billion fraud from the Moldovan banking system – the way it was prepared by decision makers;
– burdening the taxpayers with return of the stolen USD 1 billion by turning them stolen money in a state debt; as a results the taxpayers will have to compensate this loss over the next 25 years;
– several attempts of the Moldovan governors to legalize the fraudulent money via several initiatives that were designed as business support schemes;
– attempts to free the responsible decision-makers from criminal responsibility for the bank fraud;
– delegation of the duties of issuing Moldovan citizenship to a private company, by this Moldovan authorities divesting themselves from the responsibility for giving citizenship to members of criminal organizations that would legalize their money on the territory of Republic of Moldova;
– manipulation of public opinion on the process of recovering the fraudulent money;
– concerns over nationalization of the problematic packages of shares of the commercial banks;
– Russia creating system of producing crypto-currency in Transnistrian region – a system that may facilitate money laundering in Moldova.
The Moldovan Platform of the EaP CSF expresses its’ deep concern on the intensifying pressure on the representatives of civil society who oppose the phenomenon of corruption and state capture and urges European institutions to take an attitude towards the situation created in Moldova.
The Platform requires the Moldovan authorities to stop attacks on civil society activists.