Only one person from 100 arrested for bribery is atoning penalty. IPN analysis

Several experts in this field are worried because the corruption fight actions in the Republic of Moldova lack efficiency. Info-Prim Neo reporters requested them to comment on the information offered by the Department of Penitentiary Institutions, according to which only one person from more than 100 arrested in 2005 for taking and offering bribes, are atoning for their penalty from the first of January this year in prison. The Head of the Trans-frontier and Informational Offenses Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Viorel Chetaru said that last year 111 cases of bribery were registered and the policemen caught in flagrant 108 persons. Very rarely, as Viorel Chetraru says, the court decided to detain the person for 30 days, the others were investigated without any detention. After the finalization of the case and transmitting it to court all kind of doubtful things started happening, says Viorel Chetraru. He thinks that the court decisions are influenced also by bad conditions in detention isolator prisons. Moreover, the quoted source says that the judges don’t decide to imprison the guilty ones for a period of up to 7 years, but apply fines in conformity with the provisions of art. 166 of the Penal Code. The head of the Journalistic Investigations Centre, Cornelia Cozonac, declared for Info-Prim Neo that the so-called fight against corruption ends at the Prosecutor’s Office that quashes the cases or in court that hushes up the majority of them. Cornelia Cozonac says that usually the persons that took big bribes are not troubled by justice, but those that took unimportant sums of money on contrary are. This thing was proven more than once in journalistic investigations that finalized in identifying more serious cases of bribery than a teacher or doctor, who took 50-100 lei as bribe, says Cornelia Cozonac. Viorel Cibotaru, the head of the Anticorruption NGOs Alliance declared to the reporter of Info-Prim Neo, that a part of the quashed cases are on persons who took bribes of millions. This phenomenon, in the opinion of Viorel Cibotaru, is caused by several factors, among which the quality of justice, the professionalism of the investigation bodies, the influence of the “nepotism” phenomenon and of political partisanship. According to the opinion of the quoted source, the quashing of certain famous cases makes the official affirmations about the fact that the legal system is outside the corruption circle, the political influence and the influence of certain interested groups, doubtful. Viorel Cibotaru thinks that the investigation bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the General Prosecutor’s Office, of the Information and Security Service don’t always succeed in proving corruption cases, because their investigations requires a high degree of professionalism. The head of the Anticorruption NGOs Alliance thinks that the existing situation might be changed through reforming the legal framework and through transforming it into a truly independent one, as well as though reforming the investigation mechanisms. These changes, says the quoted source, can be easily done because there are three basic tools that makes them imminent: 1) The Plan of Actions the Republic of Moldova – the European Union that provides for tallying many institutions with the European standards; 2)The Council of Europe with its permanent assistance and insistence of reforming the legal framework in the Republic of Moldova; 3) The Partnership Plan of Actions the Republic of Moldova-NATO that provides for the reform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, of the General Prosecutor’s Office, of the Information and Security Service and general democratization of the country. From the beginning of this year the police arrested more than 50 persons who were suspected of tacking bribes: teachers, doctors and customs officers.