A criminal case started against the former leader of the Democratic Party Vlad Plahotniuc was joined to another case that has been pending in court since 2021. The second case features seven persons accused in the generically called “bank fraud” case. Such a decision was taken by the Buiucani Court of Chisinau, which accepted the request made by the lawyers for Plahotniuc, IPN reports.

The Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office said that it pleaded against joining the two cases, the delay in examining the case being the basic argument. “Specifically, given the absence of legal grounds for the indivisibility or connectedness of the abovementioned criminal cases, as well as the stages of holding different hearings (the first case being at the investigation stage, while the second case at the initial stage), separate facts and periods of indictment of the defendants and procedures applicable under special conditions, which required the examination of those criminal cases separately,” it is said in a press release from the institution.

The given conclusion can be challenged only together with the merits of the case and the court’s arguments will be known once the reasoned conclusion is handed over.

The next court hearing on the case was set for February 14, 12 noon.

Recently, anticorruption prosecutors announced that, together with employees of the French National Police, they searched in France several buildings that allegedly belong to Vlad Plahotniuc. As a result, 92,000 euros and 3,000 Swiss francs were seized. The origin of the money is to be established. An apartment and two villas in France were also sequestrated and prosecutors will ask for their confiscation According to information possessed by law enforcement agencies, the former Democratic leader is in Northern Cyprus.