The Communist parliamentary group accuses the Liberal-Democratic MP Ion Butmalai of instructing the Minister of the Interior Victor Catan to stop the operation to detain persons suspected of drug distribution in Slobozia Mare village of Cahul district. Contacted by Info-Prim Neo, Butmalai denied the accusations, saying he would sue the Communist MPs. In a news conference on November 18, Communist MP Igor Vremea, chairman of the parliamentary commission for national security, defense and public order, said on November 7 Ion Butmalai traveled to the village, when officers of the Cahul District Police Commissariat and of the battalion “Fulger” started the operation. “The operation was stopped, while the police officers were given breath tests that turned out negative,” Vremea said. “We are concerned about the fact that covert forces get involved in the work of the police as in the 1990s, and try to subjugate them,” Igor Vremea said. Another Communist MP Grigore Petrenko said that case showed that some of the MPs and the Ministry of the Interior started to protect criminal groups. Ion Butmalai, who is native of Cahul, has told Info-Prim Neo that on the night of November 8, at about 00.30, he was called by parents of young persons who had been searched by police officers and employees of “Fulger” battalion at the discothèque in Slobozia Mare some time earlier. “I went to the Cahul District Police Commissariat, where Commissioner Iurie Mocanu told me that those were preventive measures. As I saw he was hiding something, I sought help from Minister Catan,” the MP said. Ion Butmalai also said that he wrote an application to the Minister of the Interior, asking that they investigate the case. “The assertions made by Petrenko and Vremea are aberrant. I will raise the issue in the Parliament next week,” the MP said. The Communist MPs said at the next sitting of the Parliament they will ask for explanations from the Ministry of the Interior and the Prosecutor General’s Office over this case.