Moldovan Prosecutors dependent on political and executive power

Law experts say that prosecutors in Moldova are directly dependent on the political and Executive power, although according to the Law on Prosecution, they should be subordinated to the law. Lawyer Alexandru Tanase told the roundtable “Reform of Prosecution in Moldova”, on April 17 that there are numerous mechanisms which allow authorities to manipulate and put pressure on prosecutors, to make them less independent, to ignore the truth during penal proceedings and to listen blindly to the accusations of the state to obtain illogical condemnations. According to Tanase, the reform of the Prosecution was not made in time in Moldova, despite the fact that the Law on prosecution was passed shortly after independence. Despite all the amendments made to the Law, the activity of the Prosecution is similar to the Soviet prosecution bodies, the expert says. According to him, the amendments proposed by the experts of the Council of Europe will allow a better functioning of the Prosecutor’s Office and will transform it from the protector of several interest groups or high officials, to the protector of the law and interests of the entire society. According to Prosecutor General Valeriu Gurbulea, “the foreign experts asserted that many things were made to reform the prosecution bodies over the last 15 years, to change it from the institution which supervised the uniform observance of the law into an institution with classic functions for the European prosecution bodies”. According to him, the last package of amendments to the Law on prosecution, which will be approved according to the European standards, proposes to bestow the quality of magistrates to the prosecutors and to create a new structure within the Superior Council of Magistrates (SCM). At the same time, lawyer Vitalie Nagacevschi, chairman of Public Association “Jurists for Human Rights”, says that the place of the prosecution body should be within the SCM, which should be bicameral: a chamber for judges and one for prosecutors. In this case, he says, the independence of justice could be real. According to the jurist, the two chambers will deal with the self-management of judges and prosecution, in this way excluding the involvement of local or central authorities in the activity of the prosecutors and judges. Nagacevshi says that at the moment, only institutional independence can be ensured, but there is also subjective independence. “First, we have to reform the prosecution bodies according to EU standards, and then undertake tangible actions so that people working in the system become independent”, the expert emphasised. The roundtable “Reform of Prosecution in Moldova” was organised within the Joint Programme of the European Commission and Council of Europe on increasing independence, transparency and efficiency of justice in Moldova.