The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) today, February 10, delivered its judgment in the case of “Iordachi and others v. Moldova”, where it expressed concern that the Moldovan law does not provide adequate protection against abuse of power by the State in intercepting telephone communications, Info-Prim Neo reports. The ECHR revealed a number of deficiencies in the Moldovan legislation, which in the Court's opinion “have an impact on the actual operation of the system of secret surveillance which exists in Moldova”. The case of “Iordachi and others” was initiated by the NGO “Lawyers for Human Rights”, which at the time when the case was declared admissible was representing approximately a half of the Moldovan cases before the Court, and which, according to the delivered judgment, “was considered by the Government (of Moldova) as a subversive organization acting against the interests of the State”. The plaintiffs claimed that, because of the huge fines that the Government had to pay as a result of their professional activity as lawyers, as well as owing to the fact that most of their clients had disputes with the Communist ruling party or the secret services, they ran a serious risk of having their telephones tapped. Without mentioning any particular case, the Lawyers complained that the domestic law contained insufficient safeguards to protect them, or anyone else, from possible abuses by investigators. The Lawyers argued, in particular, that the authorizations for tapping were issued arbitrarily by the investigative judges, without a careful examination of the reasons cited by the investigators. For example, official statistics indicated that in 2007, 99.24 percent of a total of 2,372 requests for interception had been granted by investigating judges. “These figures show that the system of secret surveillance in Moldova is, to say the least, overused”, observed the Court, endorsing the plaintiffs' accusation that virtually all ill-founded criminal charges could serve as a basis for interception. “Since this is an uncommonly high number of authorizations, the Court considers it necessary to stress that telephone tapping is a very serious interference with a person's rights and that only very serious reasons based on a reasonable suspicion that the person is involved in serious criminal activity should be taken as a basis for authorizing it”, the judgment reads. At the same time, the Court notes that more than one half (59 percent) of the offenses provided for in the Criminal Code fall within the category of offenses eligible for interception warrants. According to Art.136 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, an investigating judge is entitled to store “the original copies of the tapes along with the complete written transcript ... in a sealed envelope” and order “the destruction of records which are not important for the criminal case”. However, the law makes no provision for acquainting the investigating judge with the results of the surveillance and does not require him or her to review whether the requirements of the law have been complied with. The Court further notes that overall control of the system of secret surveillance is entrusted to the Parliament which exercises it through a specialized commission. However, the manner in which the Parliament effects its control is not set out in the law and the Court has not been presented with any evidence indicating that there is a procedure in place which governs the Parliament's activity in this connection. As concerns the guarantee for the secrecy of lawyer-client communications, the Moldovan legislation doesn't provide for any procedure which would give substance to this principle. “The Court is struck by the absence of clear rules defining what should happen when, for example, a phone call made by a client to his lawyer is intercepted.” In the case of “Iordachi and others”, the ECHR awarded the plaintiffs 3,500 euros for costs and expenses. Claims for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage hadn't been made.