Chairman of the public association “UNIREA - ODIP” Vlad Biletski said a fine of up to 40,000 lei faced by the organization following a complaint made by a person can restrict its activity.

In a news conference at IPN on November 22, Vlad Biletski said that in May “UNIREA - ODIP” staged in Chisinau an event to collect the contact data of people who support Moldova’s union with Romania. Passing by the team, a person with whom they earlier had conflicts notified the Center for Personal Data Protection. Though the complaint referred to Vlad Biletski, the police report was drawn up against the organization.

The leader of “UNIREA - ODIP” said the forms used in the event are similar to those used by other entities in other events, but no one so far has been penalized for this. “They want to prevent us from collecting signatures in favor of the union. Tomorrow they will bar us from meeting with people. The day after tomorrow they will oblige us to remove the word “Union” by imposing different fines on us,” stated Vlad Biletski.

According to the activist, the necessity of notifying the Center for Personal Data Protection when collecting contact data for personal purposes is not specified anyway. “We do not send these data somewhere. They are not used to compile databases. We collected these data to be able to contact the people who support the union so as to inform them about our activities. They offered us the data voluntarily,” stated the leader of “UNIREA - ODIP”.

He also said that the norm based on which the organization he heads was fined is abusive and opens up big opportunities of imposing penalties. Such acts can deprive organizations of the right to stage particular activities or these can be even banned from working.