Hotline set up for reporting corruption cases

As from June 1, 2007, a hotline has started to operate to collect signals of corruption practices that citizens experience. The hotline is part of the “Informing the Population about Corruption” Project. Cristina Cojocaru, project coordinator, told Info-Prim Neo that the hotline 92-79-79 is part of a national campaign to inform the Moldovan population about this phenomenon and fight against the general apathy. The hotline will be open from June 1, 2007 until February 15, 2008, from Monday to Friday, from 9.00 to 21.00. 4 lawyers will offer free of charge consultations to persons who will solicit their assistance. At the same time, these lawyers will be able to pass some of the cases to the law enforcement bodies or to journalists to be investigated with the consent of the calling person. To ensure a better quality of the journalists’ work, it has been organised on May 30 – June 1 a seminar themed “The Legal Aspect of the Investigative Reporting on Corruption” that brought together 15 reporters. The trainers of the seminar were representatives of the law enforcement bodies. During the seminar, Cornelia Cozonac, the head of the Investigative Journalism Centre, stated that the Moldovan investigative journalism doesn’t quite have a tradition. The students of the faculties of journalism haven’t been taught this kind of reporting. The investigative journalists mainly learned it on their own, either from mistakes or from a journalistic intuition. The neighbour countries haven’t developed a tradition in this field either, but for example in Romania, the authorities react more properly to such investigations. In Moldova things develop slowly in this direction. Though we have an appropriate legal framework, it is often not respected, and there are many other obstacles a reporter has to face while making an investigation. Nevertheless, over the last years, more and more qualitative investigations appear, added Cornelia Cozonac, expressing her hope that this type of journalism will see better practices developing.