Amendments to Code of Criminal Procedure to be debated

The amendments proposed to the Code of Criminal Procedure will be open to public debates. The amendments concern the chapters on prosecution, operative investigation activity, proceedings and procedural measures of constraint. Lilia Railean, legal consultant at the Ministry of Justice and participant in the development of the amendments, says that the bill aims to improve equality in criminal procedures, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to the expert, the current legal framework creates a bureaucratic procedure in the process of carrying out a prosecution. The Ministry of Justice wants to remove some of the procedural attributions of the head of the prosecution body and namely the power to request files for verification, to write indications in the files, to approve acts of the prosecution officer. These changes are meant to guarantee the independence of the prosecution officer and to increase his responsibility for the quality and legality of issued papers. The bill also proposes the limitation of the superior prosecutor’s attributions during the prosecution, in order to raise the personal responsibility of the prosecutor in charge of the prosecution through the penalty of canceling the procedural acts issued by him. “There was the proposal to make the Prosecutor General’s Office the only prosecution body. However, we agreed this path was too speedy and should be analyzed thoroughly. We’ll see whether the Prosecutor General’s Office can carry out the prosecution by itself”, said Lilia Railean. Dorel Morari, deputy prosecutor of the Anticorruption Prosecution Office, explained that such a measure would increase the number of prosecutors, which can’t be accepted at this stage. “That’s why a different path was chosen: to offer more independence to the prosecution officers. Anyway, there aren’t enough funds to raise the number of prosecutors right now”, said Dorel Morari. The amendments proposed to the chapter on operative investigation activity stipulated that any measures affecting a person’s private rights and approved by the judge should be carried out only in a criminal case. At the same time, measures authorized only by the prosecutor can be performed outside the file if they are related to fighting crimes and guaranteeing state security. In the chapter on proceedings, the Ministry of Justice wants to modify the competences of courts so that for any crimes the basic institution was the court. The Court of Appeals would deal only with appeals or recourses and the Supreme Justice Court would judge only first section recourses. This action is part of the Government plan of actions for 2011-2014. Now, only the Supreme Justice Court has the competence to judge in first instance the crimes committed by the Moldovan President. The amendments will be debated and sent to the Government for approval. The project is part of the judiciary reform strategy for 2011-2015.