MP Marina Tauber, vice president of the Shor Party, recently announced that Ilan Shor, who has been declared a fugitive from justice, doesn’t appear in public as there are "risks to his life and security". It is a statement that should raise the concerns of entire society, but also the prompt reactions of the state institutions. This is because the life and security of any society member must be a paramount duty of the state institutions, perhaps, even more so if a member of Parliament is involved. Agencies that leave such statements without any attention are doing a poor job, should be reformed or dissolved, and their leaders replaced with someone more professional and perhaps more receptive.

Until the authorized bodies get around to reacting to this, let's try to analyze where the great danger comes from and why the citizen Ilan Shor is at risk?

The only suggestion made by Marina Tauber, which could be or couldn’t be related to the alleged dangers, refers to the fact that Prime Minister Maia Sandu "is putting enormous pressure by telling judges what decisions they have to make, thus exerting pressure on the judiciary and the Ilan Shor case”. If we are to follow this track, we could suppose that the "danger to life and security" could come from a judicial system, possibly, inequitable as regards the Ilan Shor case, which has been dragging through courts for three years already. However something doesn’t make sense here. If the court were to find find him guilty by an irrevocable decision, the alleged dangers wouldn’t make sense either before or after the decision. If Ilan Shor were to be sentenced to prison, he and his supporters would perhaps have a reason to talk about selective and politically influenced justice, about great injustice, about health, freedom, but not about "risks to life and safety". People who live in detention in Moldova, for example, ex-prime minister Vlad Filat, put there after Ilan Shor turned him in, or the controversial businessman Veaceslav Platon, sentenced to about 30 years behind bars, or the former Democratic MP Iurie Bolboceanu, convicted for no less than high treason, as well as others who complained about the “selective”, “politically-motivated” and “unfair” nature of their convictions. So, the “danger to life and security” doesn’t stem from the “unfair” or “influenced” judiciary.

The reason why Ilan Shor doesn’t show up in public, protecting his life and security, has nothing to do with justice, because sooner or later he will have to appear before a judge. This is true if we allow for the possibility that he is not fleeing from justice and hasn’t left Moldova in violation of his bail conditions. Or maybe he is actually in another country and then the "dangers to life and security" may be justified or not. If there is no justification, we must assume that it is just a trick covering the illegal absence from the country. It is also possible that "the danger to life and security" may be real and valid, wherever he is, but it doesn’t come from justice.

One of the assumptions might be that Ilan Shor isn’t hiding from the prosecutors and the court. If at least part of what is stated in the public space regarding his role in the bank fraud and other fraudulent schemes is true, he must be more afraid of possible accomplices. And they, if we believe in genre films, can find anyone anywhere, maybe easier in prison, which is why Ilan Shor doesn’t accept to appear before the judges who can make such a decision.

The accomplices, if any, would have good reasons for wanting him to be unable to speak during the investigations that seem to be under way. They would like him to be a "non-talker", as he has already shown his usefulness by formulating a self-denunciation for a person in high position but, apparently, undesirable for others with official or unofficial high positions.

Perhaps this assumption would represent another reason for the authorized bodies to resort to react to these statements, to find Ilan Shor and to do this before the potential competitors, if they want to have a "talking" witness.

Valeriu Vasilică, IPN

IPN Note: In June 2017, Ilan Shor was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for causing damages to the state through deception and abuse of trust. The case reached the Cahul Court of Appeals, but a decision hasn’t been issued yet. Since the beginning of July, Shor has faced fresh charges for allegedly leaving Modova circumventing border formalities and in breach of his bail conditions.