Minister of Justice Fadei Nagacevschi will forward today, November 18, to the Superior Council of Prosecutors (CSP) the short list with the four candidates preselected for the position of Prosecutor General, presented by the commission in charge on October 29. The announcement was made during a press briefing, IPN reports.
Fadei Nagacevschi says he analyzed how the competition for the selection of candidates for the position of Prosecutor General was cancelled and found that the former minister committed a serious breach of law. "At the ministry I have not found any document that would indicate the legal grounds on which the competition was suspended or cancelled", says the minister.
Fadei Nagacevschi has stressed that by law he is obligated to recognize the results of the contest and to submit the list of the pre-selected candidates to the CSP. "The Minister of Justice had no right to disregard the results of the expert commission. Only the commission could eventually review its results if it deemed it appropriate," stated Fadei Nagacevschi.
The new minister has also mentioned that the institution he runs has one week at the most to complete and submit to the Venice Commission the draft law on justice reform. "If we fail to do so, we risk losing valuable time for the implementation of the judiciary reform and it may be delayed for too long," Fadei Nagacevschi argued.
The draft law aims at "the extraordinary vetting of the judges, the reopening of the doors of the Supreme Court of Justice to all litigants by returning to public hearings, in criminal trials initially, but also by ensuring a reasoning part to all the rulings pronounced by the Supreme Court of Justice."
On November 6, Olesea Stamate, former minister of justice, cancelled the result of the competition for the pre-selection of candidates for the position of Prosecutor General. The stated reason was that after the announcement of the results the members of the commission received additional information about some candidates, information that raised suspicions about their integrity.
Subsequently, the former government headed by Maia Sandu assumed responsibility for amending the Law on the Prosecutor's Office so that the prime minister would propose a short list of candidates for the position of Prosecutor General. As a result of a censure motion filed by the PSRM, the government was dismissed.
