The contest staged by the Superior Council of Prosecutors (SCP), which culminated in the election of Ion Munteanu as prosecutor general, cannot be considered an authentic contest. According to businessman Denis Urechi, two of the three candidates were admitted only formally, to create the illusion of a competition, although it was known from the beginning that Ion Munteanu will be designated the winner.
In a press conference hosted by IPN, Denis Urechi said that there were many speculations in the national press on how the prosecutor general will be elected and these ultimately were not confirmed either by the Law on Prosecutor’s Office or by the SCP regulations on the selection of the prosecutor general. The main divergence between the information that was public and the actual regulations is that the candidate for prosecutor general should not be subject to external assessment and, as a result, the candidate for the position of prosecutor general is not subject to vetting.
“Therefore, three candidates took part in the contest: Ion Munteanu, Octavian Yakimovski, Alexandru Cernei. All the three are anticorruption prosecutors. But the mimicking of the contest resided in the fact that candidate Ion Munteanu took part in the vetting procedure for the appointment as judge at the SCJ. And now the people have the feeling that Ion Munteanu passed the vetting and was selected for the position of prosecutor general. But Ion Munteanu’s vetting has nothing to do with his appointment as prosecutor general, as there is no document by which at least the Vetting Commission’s decision would be attached to the appointment of Ion Munteanu,” said Denis Urechi.
Denis Urechi said that during the state capture, the criminal government had two political clubs. The first club was PCCOCS and the second was the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office. The previous attempt to organize the contest for the position of prosecutor general also involved PCCOCS prosecutor Igor Demchuchin and a person from outside the system. In that case, at least a competition between the candidates was obvious, but in the present contest Octavian Yakimovski and Alexandru Cernei participated only formally.
“It’s not clear to me how a government that was declared a fighter against the captured state appointed a prosecutor general who was an exponent of this captured state. Moreover, it did this in the style of state capture, involving disinformation through the press, the use of falsehoods for personal gain. It is also not clear how the justice system was reformed if the selection of the prosecutor general remained identical to that of the time of state capture,” stated Denis Urechi.
The businessman said that Ion Munteanu is a vulnerable person, with poor professional training, who became prosecutor general following a political conjuncture in which the country’s leadership, for the sake of starting negotiations on accession to the EU, was ready to sign the decree to appoint anyone as prosecutor general. The current government doesn’t benefit from the appointment of Ion Munteanu as prosecutor general, but the appointment of the prosecutor will benefit persons involved in the “bank fraud” case and people who manage money from that fraud.
Note: IPN Agency offers the right of reply to persons who consider themselves targeted in the news made from the statements of the organizers of this press conference, including by facilitating the organization of another press conference under similar conditions.
