Urecheanu admits he didn’t follow exactly City Council’s decision in ‘ambulances case’

The former Chisinau mayor and the leader of the Moldova Noastra Alliance Party, Serafim Urecheanu, admits that he partially went against the decision of the Chisinau City Council concerning the purchase of 40 Volkswagen ambulances when he decided to avoid lease schemes and save some 4 million taxpayers’ lei. According to Urecheanu, the Council’s decided in December 2002 to procure 40 ambulances via a 10-year lease deal. Managing to gather the necessary sum, the City Hall decided to pay all the money and save 3.6 million lei, which would have represented the interest. Urecheanu made this fact known to media representatives after today’s sitting of the Centru District Court, which has been examining the so called ‘ambulances case’ for three years now. The representative for the City Hall failed again to appear in court. The court imposed a 500 lei fine on the newly appointed head of the legal department, Diana Gurschi, and then heard a defence witness, the director of St. Michael’s Hospital Mihai Ciobanu, who had chaired the municipal commission for the procurement of the ambulances back in 2002. Ciobanu confirmed that the decision to buy the ambulances was made exclusively by the Council. It was also the Council that picked the type of van and selected the vendor out of 7 proposed dealers. The Council then mandated the then mayor Urecheanu to close the deal. The court was also supposed to hear today the director of Rumeon Ltd, Oleg Rudenco, who sold the 40 vans. But he missed the sitting for health reasons. Earlier he requested the court not to summon him as a witness, relaying on Article 90 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which exempts a person from testifying in court if his testimony may be used against him. Today Rudenco is the only person at Rumeon that knows all the details of the deal. Even though Urecheanu’s lawyer Vasile Rahlea insisted that the trial cannot proceed in the orderly manner without Rudenco bearing witness, the prosecution and the court chaired by Judge Nadejda Mazur agreed that the trial can go on in the absence of the key witness of the defence. As the defence requested more time to get details about the deal, the court adjourned until next Monday. The ‘ambulances case’ originated in 2002 when the municipality bought 40 vans and converted them into ambulances for 4 million lei. Since then, the case has seen a couple of stages. One of them was ended by the Extended Panel of the Supreme Court, which obliged the public prosecutor to stop prosecuting Urecheanu. However, prosecutor Bernaz contested the judgment, while the Centru Court ordered continuing criminal proceedings against Urecheanu, marking the first case in the history of the Moldovan jurisprudence when a district court defies the decision of the supreme court of law.