Iurii Ceban, the owner of the hangar in Criuleni in which prosecutors and the police at the end of June 2020 said helicopters were being produced clandestinely, said he possesses conclusive evidence of the fact that the helicopter models confiscated and disassembled by prosecutors  go to ruin on the territory of a bus company near Criuleni. In an open letter addressed to the press and Prosecutor General Alexandr Stoianoglo, he asks that the PG should assess the legality of the actions taken by the prosecutors and should classify them, IPN reports.

Iurii Ceban noted that other illegalities against him, his family and property are also committed. The institution of criminal proceedings is unjustified, while the searches in areas and apartment in the absence of owners are illegal. His procedural rights weren’t ensured as he cannot conduct an examination because the object that needs to be examined was destroyed. “By the destruction of the so-called object of the offense, the employees of the law enforcement agencies actually hampered the investigation as a normal investigation is further impossible without kept physical objects. The same prosecutors seized 867 large-format sheets of paper – sketches I made during many years that are my property,” he wrote.

Iurii Ceban reminds that on January 29, 2020, the prosecutor general promised that “the shows with balaclavas” will stop, as the illegal arrests, searches and wiretapping will do, and “the prosecutors will not become involved in the economic activity of entrepreneurs and will not follow businessmen on their own initiative”. But, according to the author of the letter, in several months “the show with balaclavas” was resumed in the hangar of helicopter inventors, when a number of persons were arrested, who the next day were classed as witnesses.

Iurii Ceban denies the accusations according to which he dealt with the construction or repair of helicopters that were later smuggled abroad. “As the object of the alleged offense is the full-size helicopter models, while the model of a helicopter in natural size weighs 750 kg, the illicit transportation of an oversized object is impossible. The first traffic police officer would have stopped me for conveying oversized goods in the absence of an appropriate police escort!” runs the letter.

Making reference to the decision to class him as an offender, which says that he introduced 6 to 12 Ka-26 helicopters that he repaired and then transported back to Ukraine, Iurii Ceban said both the Customs Service and the Border Guards Service of Ukraine didn’t record the transportation of helicopters through the state border of Ukraine, from the left side of the Nistru to the right side. The prosecutors also allowed serious contradictions in the documents referring to this case, namely the decision to start a criminal case over smuggling from Ukraine and the decision to class him as an offender, where smuggling refers to Romania and Russia already. The author warns that Romania forms part of the EU and the EU has a rather meticulous attitude to the security of its borders.

Iurii Ceban said there is no information about the hour, place and method of committing the offense, about the caused damage and no clear identification and explanation of the connection between the object of the investigation, the so-called actions of the offenders and the alleged damage. “Why were ten persons arrested in the absence of any offense element? Ten persons who have nothing to do with any of the episodes invented by a sick imagination. Later, eight of them were classed as witnesses!” noted the author.

“That’s why I asked you to tell me, as the prospector general, apart from the primitive terror, are there any other methods of conducting an inquiry in Moldova? You arrested my son and his friends, knowing that their wives were to give birth. Mister Prosecutor General Alexandr Stoianoglo, I urge you to ultimately provide official answers to all my letters addressed to you,” says Iurii Ceban’s letter.

The Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime and Special Cases stated for NewMaker that it is waiting for the results of the assessment of this case from the Civil Aviation Authority, while the confiscated helicopters are in a safe place.

At the end of June, the Prosecutor General’s Office in a press release said the helicopters made clandestinely in Criuleni were to be taken to the CIS. The aircraft are identical in appearance to the “Ka 26” model. The prosecutors and the police were carrying out searches at the production basis.

In the same period, Iurii Ceban said a group of enthusiasts performed technical tests on models and those weren’t real helicopters, as the police called them. The businessman noted the patent for different technical solutions for the fuselage models classed as helicopters by the police belonged to him. The models were made from zero with minimum costs.