“Ziarul de Garda” team blackmailed after writing about corruption schemes at Moldova's Railways
The newspaper “Ziarul de Garda” asks the Ministry of the Interior, the Prosecutor General's Office and the Security and Information Service to guarantee the security of the reporters who revealed corruption schemes at the Railway Terminal in Chisinau and start investigating this case. The newspaper's director Alina Radu and editor-in-chief Aneta Grosu say the reporters and their families are intimidated by unknown persons, Info-Prim Neo reports, quoting a letter from the paper.
The newspaper's team say they stared to be threatened by phone, by email and even directly after they published three parts of an article titled “Corruption Train at Chisinau Railway Terminal” in the last numbers of “Ziarul de Garda”.
“The threats have mainly the same content: {“You do not understated the gravity of the problem and what people are involved in this business}, “it is dangerous as far as I know, but, believe me, I know a lot”, “not a settling of accounts as we are not in the 1990s; there are more efficient methods”, “I would be afraid … without a gun”, {“on an electric chair or something of the kind”}, the letter says.
The team calls on the media organizations to join the campaign aimed at discovering corruption schemes at Moldova's Railways by republishing or rebroadcasting the articles published in the paper. They say they will continue to investigate corruption schemes at Moldova's Railways despite threats.