Dorin Purice, secretary of state at the Ministry of the Interior, said the accusations made against him by two border police officers, who said that in 2014 they were illegally handed over to the Romanian authorities for being investigated in a criminal case, are absolutely unfounded. Dorin Purice, who then headed the Border Police Department, noted the accusations are nothing but insinuations or simple revenge taken by former employees of the Border Police, who turned out to be the organizers of a criminal group specialized in smuggling and acts of corruption.
In a news conference at IPN, Dorin Purice said he didn’t know that the two officers, Iurie Volchanov and Ivan Mustață, could have been arrested by Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate. He was told about this post-factum. Even if he knew it, there is no legal norm in the legal system that would oblige the citizens to prevent an offender from being arrested. He is any time ready to present himself before the prosecutors to clarify this case. He will also request the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office to “reanimate” the criminal case over cigarette smuggling that involved the two border police officers. The case was dropped because the two were convicted in Romania.
As to the events of 2014, Dorin Purice said the Effective Inspection Division of the Border Police Department was informed that a cigarette smuggling attempt will be made on the Leova border segment on the night of May 2. The same day, there were created two groups of border police officers for checks. Two minibuses entered the border segment after midnight. The police intervened and arrested four persons and the two units of transport loaded with over 120 boxes of cigarettes. A boat and tools for transporting the boxes of cigarettes were found on the bank of the Prut.
Iurie Volchanov, the head of the Special Investigations Division of the Leova Border Police, was met at the scene during the search operation. He said he was performing routine checks. “However, in the news conference he said he was there because he knew about the planned smuggling operation. My question is why he was alone on that segment and how he intended to arrest the four persons himself,” stated Dorin Purice.
At the same time, the Romanian Border Police arrested five persons from Romania and Moldova and two units of transport with 20 boxes of cigarettes that had been recently transported from Moldova on the bank of the Prut. Towards morning, the Romanian authorities asked for a meeting to discuss the incident. Iurie Volchanov and Ivan Musteață were to take part in the discussions voluntarily. When returning, Isac Tarlapan, who then headed the West Regional Division of the Border Police Department and also took part in the meeting, said the two officers were arrested by the Romanian authorities for active corruption and cigarettes smuggling. The two were tried and found guilty.
According to Dorin Purice, the problem of the alleged illegal handover of the employees to the Romanian Border Police was investigated by the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office in 2014, at the request of the lawyer of one of the two border police officers. In 2018, a complaint was submitted to the Internal Protection and Anticorruption Service of the Ministry of the Interior, which examined the situation. “In both of the cases, no elements of an offense or deviations from the legislation were identified in my actions or the actions of my colleague,” he stated.
The former chief of the Border Police noted he does not understand why the two border police officers tend to be reemployed. He considers the work contracts of the two should have been terminated, not suspended when the sentence became definitive as the persons with a criminal record cannot work in the Police.
The two officers and their lawyer related the case in a news conference at IPN.
Two former border police officers say they were illegally “extradited” to Romania
