The Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office must focus on cases of grand corruption and other high-profile cases, including unresolved cases from the past. The Office’s priorities will be action, equality and transparency, declared the freshly appointed Anticorruption Chief Prosecutor Veronica Dragalin during her inaugural press conference.

Dragalin said her Office will focus on fighting crimes that cause the greatest damage to the public budget, such as bank fraud, embezzlement from companies with government ownership, or money laundering crimes.

Also, Dragalin mentioned the problem of investigation leaks, saying it “impedes the fight against corruption, creates the risk of high-profile criminal cases being sabotaged, and undermines people’s trust in the law enforcement”. However, she thinks some disclosure restrictions are “excessive” and need to be reviewed. “We will disclose as much as the law and the interest of the investigation will allow”.

On the subject of staffing, Dragalin said the number of investigators and prosecutors in her Office is insufficient for the caseload.

“In my opinion, until now there has never been a genuine fight in Moldova to eradicate corruption through criminal prosecution. There was so much corruption in Moldova that it is impossible to investigate and obtain sentences in all these cases”, stated Dragalin.

Before being appointed to the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, Veronica Dragalin was an assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting public corruption in California.