The Grigoriopol Court acquitted the president of the Glodeni Court, who was accused of passive corruption. The judge stood trial together with the person that gave him bribe. Instead of trying this person for active corruption, the judges acquitted him too. The Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, which demanded that the culprits should be sentenced to eight years in jail each, considers the given sentence is illegal and will be thus challenged, IPN reports.
The Grigoriopol Court argued that the actions of the accused do not represent elements of an offense. It ordered that the decision to sequestrate the property should be annulled and that the owner should be paid back about €5,000, US$200 and over 10,000 lei, which was found and seized during searches in the office of the president of the Glodeni Court, and should be restored the owned realty to the value of over 200,000 lei.
The judge was arrested by anticorruption prosecutors and officers of the National Anticorruption Center on April 16, 2014, inside the Glodeni Court, immediately after this received 10,000 lei from a person, who was tried together with the judge, for acquitting him for driving under the influence. Initially, the two were arrested for 72 hours. Later, even if the prosecutors asked to remand the judge and that person in custody, the court set these free. At the request of the prosecutor general, the judge was suspended from post in April 2014.
During the last three years, the anticorruption prosecutors investigated ten judges suspected of acts of corruption. Seven of these were brought to justice, two of them being already convicted.
Recently, the Supreme Court of Justice also acquitted a former prosecutor of the Floresti Prosecutor’s Office accused of passive corruption. The criminal case was started based on a complaint submitted by a woman lawyer on probation. She said that the prosecutor asked for 8,000 lei from her for not taking legal action against her and not informing the Lawyers Union about the fact that the probationer took part in trials. The prosecutor was arrested immediately after he took the money. In May 2015, the court sentenced the ex-prosecutor to seven years in jail, fined him 20,000 lei and banned him from holding public posts for a three-year period.
