Swindle turned into an easily practicable tool for starting criminal cases and convicting less protected persons, stated lawyer Gheorghe Macovei,who in a news conference at IPN, presented the case of a woman who got nine years for a loan that she repaid twice.

According to the lawyer, his client is the founder and director of a company that manages walnut orchards. In 2012, the woman got a loan of 400,000 lei from the friends of her ex-husband for paying interest on the raised bank loan. She took the money for a month and paid it back on time through the agency of her ex-husband. In two years, in 2014, the creditor appeared and said that the money didn’t reach him and he sued the woman to get his money back based on a receipt signed by her.

Gheorghe Macovei said that when the woman’s lawyer in the civil case asked for an expert examination of the annexed receipt, a criminal case was started against his client. As the lawyer in the civil case denied the signature on a receipt of 2014, it was considered that his client denied the debt, not recognizing it, and committed thus a swindle. The woman was sentenced to nine years behind bars even if she repaid the debt one more time.

The Appeals Court rejected the appeal and the case reached the Supreme Court of Justice, which ordered to retry the case. The Chisinau City Appeals Court upheld its sentence and in 2018 the case was remitted again to the Supreme Court of Justice. A judgement hasn’t been yet passed. The next hearing was scheduled for June 25.

The lawyer noted that if the Supreme Court of Justice does not change its position and ascertains mistakes committed by the lower courts of law, this will have to admit a system problem concerning the swindle and its interpretation. If it upholds the decisions of the Appeals Court, it will take two contrary decisions and the ECHR could condemn Moldova for non-uniform implementation of the law in the same case.

According to Gheorghe Macovei, the persons involved in this case aimed to destroy the woman’s business, which from a business worth millions of lei in two years became insolvent. “When the non-fulfilment of a civil relationship can be easily turned into a criminal case that is punished criminally, each of us risks something like this,” he noted, adding being sentenced to nine years in jail for a repaid loan is illogical and illegal.

The woman will be on the outside until a definitive sentence is passed.