European experts say Moldovan authorities don’t fight high-level corruption

European experts suggested Moldovan anti-corruption authorities should investigate cases at high political level, so that, once in court, these cases can serve as a proof for the citizens that the state is really fighting against this phenomenon. Maurizio Varanese, expert of the Council of Europe, told the National Anti-Corruption Conference on Friday that he hasn’t heard about any cases related to high-level corruption involving big sums of money, from the discourses of the law enforcement bodies. “I don’t think that you attained serious results in fighting high-level corruption”, Varanese replied to the speech of the Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Andrei Pogurschi. “We should not forget that corruption is spreading and it involves big money. If you don’t have a law to regulate the conflict of interest, then you don’t have measures to counter corruption”, Varanese added. The Centre for Combating Economic Crimes and Corruption, as well as the General Public Prosecutor’s Office avoided naming any cases of political corruption. The Centre’s director Valentin Mejinschi explained that he only mentioned “the cases discovered by the Centre in 2007, without mentioning the cases that had been brought to court last year, the ones you call political”, adding that instead “these cases loom heavily in the newspapers”. At the same time, the General Prosecutor’s Office hesitated to answer the question put by the representative of Transparency International Moldova, whether it reacts to the cases when the press writes about corruption in the case of ministers, MPs and judges. According to the European expert, in order to fight corruption, both prevention and repression measures are required. When prevention is inefficient, repression should be applied on the corrupt persons – they should be subject to criminal not administrative liability, their assets and money should be seized. “It might be the case for you to employ integrity tests, which are popular in several countries, where undercover policemen propose bribes to officials and if they agree to take it they are immediately handcuffed. Maybe you should think about this kind of testing here in Moldova”, the expert said.