Ion Osipov, mayor of Popeasca village in Ştefan Vodă district, is asking President Igor Dodon for help because he is compelled by “abusive court orders” to sell a 2.8 ha plot of land in Popeasca with a market value of 3 million lei for just a fraction of the amount. During a press conference at IPN, the mayor denounced this as a “dispossession of Popeasca citizens of public property.”

Chiril Cazacu, the village hall’s land status specialist, said that in 2016 a company from the neighboring Talmaza village asked to buy the respective plot adjoining some property it owns on the border between the villages, offering 74,000 lei for it. The Popeasca village hall neither accepted, nor refused the proposition.

Meanwhile, says Chiril Cazacu, the company ordered a pre-feasibility study on the delimitation of the land adjoining the property. Without being signed and stamped by the mayor, the study was presented in court, and the company somehow managed to secure ownership of the plot on its basis.

Subsequently, the Popeasca village hall hired an independent licensed firm to carry out the delimitation of the plot adjoining the respective property. It concluded that only 0.9 ha could be given to the claimant for 23,000 lei, but the remaining piece of 1.9 hectares had a different status, and it could only be sold through a public auction, and for a much higher price, of over 2.5 million lei.

Mayor Ion Osipov accuses the court of passing a manifestly illegal ruling and says that all the law enforcement agencies have refused to initiate a criminal investigation into this case. After the Supreme Court of Justice pronounced a ruling in the claimant’s favor, Osipov says the President is now the last resort.