Prime Minister Valeriu Strelet said that he will not tender his resignation now that Vlad Filat, who conceded the administration of the PLDM to him, was deprived of parliamentary immunity and arrested, IPN reports.

“I do not have the right to leave the people who took to the streets. I do not have the right to abandon the partners from abroad, with whom I had very good discussions lately. I ask you to have confidence in me and I will also have confidence in you. I will do my job with consecration and devotion, until particular forces will make effort to obtain my dismissal. I could also be investigated. I will not leave of my own free will. I cannot and do not have the right to abandon the people in such a difficult period,” Valeriu Strelet said in a press briefing in the evening of October 15.

Speaking about the arrest of Vlad Filat, Strelet said he hopes that Filat will prove his innocence and expressed his bewilderment at the fact that Ilan Shor hasn’t been arrested yet. “I’m sure that the main beneficiary will go home calmly as if he does not have planes, bank accounts and millions. I now see why some of the criminal cases opened at our insistence gather dust on shelves. I’m sure that these subjects will be raised again in the near future,” stated the Premier.

The leader of the PLDM Vlad Filat was arrested for 72 hours by officers of the National Anticorruption Center after he was deprived of parliamentary immunity by the votes of 79 MPs. The anticorruption prosecutors accuse the Liberal-Democratic heavyweight of passive corruption and influence peddling.

According to the prosecutor general’s requisition, while holding the post of Prime Minister, Vlad Filat asked and received money and property from Ilan Shor for influencing public functionaries from the Government and other state institutions to take decisions and to adopt normative documents needed to ensure the issuing of additional shares at Banca de Economii, without the participation of the state. This led to the diminution of the state-owned holding in this bank to 33.3% plus 1 share and the taking over of Banca de Economii by Ilan Shor. These decisions also ensured the naming of Ilan Shor as head of the Administration Board of Banca de Economii and this thus obtained real possibilities of influencing the activity and decisions of the bank.