Valeriu Pasat speaks about cases fabricated against him by order or Vladimir Voronin

The former minister of defense of Moldova and head of the Security and Information Service (SIS) Valeriu Pasat revealed the causes of his arrest at the Chisinau international airport on March 11, 2005. In a news conference on November 23, Pasat said he was detained because he did not fulfill certain 'requests' by the then head of state Vladimir Voronin, Info-Prim Neo reports. Valeriu Pasat said at that moment there were three causes: his refusal, as head of the SIS, to gather compromising evidence against some of the PCRM members, including Vladimir Turcan, Vadim Misin, Dmitri Todoroglo, Ala Popescu and others, his refusal to sell armament of the National Army to guerillas in Chechnya, and the fact that he was in favor of the Cuchurgan power plant being sold to the Russian state-owned company RAO UES, not to the Voronin family. “We could then choose between privatizing the plant at some advantages for the state or selling it to an Odessa resident called Goldenberg, who said he was a Belgian investor,” Pasat said. The former minister of defense reiterated that the cases against him were fabricated by order of Vladimir Voronin, whose ideology is earning money. Valeriu Pasat made public a letter of the former foreign minister Andrei Stratan to the heads of the Moldovan embassies abroad. “These functionaries were to convince the authorities of the states where they were working that the steps taken by the Moldovan administration were right,” Pasat said. In another development, Valeriu Pasat said that Andrei Stratan has been recently in Moscow and that he intends to found a pro-Russia party. Pasat said he was satisfied that the Prosecutor General's Office decided to close the cases opened against him, after four years of investigations. He also said he will soon publish these cases and will insist that those who fabricated them be held accountable. “I refer to Voronin, Papuc, Gurbulea. We cannot leave them unpunished,” Valeriu Pasat said. In a communique issued the same day, the Prosecutor General's Office says Prosecutor General Valeriu Zubko ordered creating a new prosecuting group that will analyze the materials on the basis of which legal action was taken against the former minister of defense and head of the Security and Information Service. Valeriu Pasat returned from Moscow to Chisinau on November 2, after the Moldovan authorities decided to renew his passport. Valeriu Pasat was arrested on March 11, 2005. Two of the cases against him, in which he is accused of prejudicing the state by selling military warplanes and rockets, have been examined two times, including at the Supreme Court of Justice. Every time, they were sent back. In July 2009, the Chisinau Court of Appeals examined them for the third time and confirmed again that the former minister was not guilty. The other two cases opened while he was in custody in 2006, in which he is accused of smuggling armament and of attempted coup at the instructions of the Kremlin, were not sent to court.