Cases lost at ECHR in 18 months cost Moldova MDL 5 mln

European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned Moldova in 25 cases during the last 18 months, obliging it to pay a total sum of MDL 4.87mln. On Wednesday, December 6, “Lawyers for Human Rights” Organization publicized a review of the ECHR judgments made in this period, including also information about persons responsible for Moldova’s condemnation. This summary has been worked out in order to provide assistance to authorities in initiating recourse actions (for the recovery of the sums paid by the government) against persons who are accountable for Moldova’s condemnation by the Strasbourg Court. According to Vitalie Nagacevschi, art.17 of the Law on governmental agent establishes his legal obligation to inform the Higher Magistrates’ Court and the General Public Prosecutor Office about all the cases of Moldova’s condemnation so that these authorities can operate the adequate control in order to identify the person who is guilty of the condemnation, and bring in recourse actions against them. This means that the General Prosecutor Office could appeal to the court in order to recover the money from the persons who should be brought to account. Vlad Gribincea, member of the organization, declared that in the case of those 17 decisions made by ECHR till July 1, 2005, there weren’t any recourse actions initiated by the state authorities for recovering the damages caused by persons accountable. He specified, on the other hand, that the Public prosecutor together with the governmental agent should identify the culpability of each authority in each separate case. ECHR convicted Moldova in 42 cases. The first condemnation took place in December 2001.