After a group of lawyers yesterday accused the Anticorruption Prosecution Service (PA) of starting a criminal case against a fellow attorney to intimidate him into silence on a high-profile case, the PA today dismissed the allegations as “baseless and panicked”.

The PA said in a statement that the allegations “reinforce the perception that (the lawyers) seek to justify and build a privileged status for some actors of the judicial system”.

On the criminal case, the PA said it was started after lawyer Igor Hlopețchi “knowingly” filed a “false” complaint on behalf of his client and gave “false statements” about it in court. “The right to complain (…) may not be used abusively and invariably comes with accountability for the truthfulness of the statements given”, the prosecutors say.