Former vice director of the National Anticorruption Center Cristina Țărnă considers the arresting of the former chief of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office Viorel Morari and what is happening to him represent revenge taken by the skeletons from the APO’s closet. All those involved in the examination of the criminal case started against him, beginning with those who carried out inspections at the APO, are investigated in different cases. Therefore, the whole process was discredited, IPN reports.
“They say the judge who examined his case was on the list of judges against whom the criminal case over the illegal tapping of journalists’ phones initiated by the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office was started. (...) Thus, we have investigating prosecutors featured in the cases of the APO, the main prosecutor dealing with the case featured in a case of the APO, the judge who ordered the arrest featured in such an investigation. That’s why I say that it looks like revenge taken by the skeletons from the APO’s closet,” Cristina Țarnă stated in a program on Jurnal TV channel.
Expert Ștefan Gligor noted the activity of the APO and the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime and Special Cases should have been mandatorily investigated, but the question is, how this was done. “The investigation should have been performed by credible persons. This is the biggest objection to the Prosecutor General’s Office and its chief Alexandr Stoianoglo. When you name a person who was prosecuted by Morari as the main prospector in this case, you discredit the whole exercise. This is a professional ethical conflict. The given prosecutor and the judge as well should have refused to become involved,” stated the expert.
According to Gligor, for this case the Prosecutor General’s Office should have delegated a prosecutor free from such suspicions. “For our citizens, the coordination system - where it is good and where it is bad – disappears. If you investigate prosecutors suspected of being corrupt and of having terrorized this country, many people and of having handled political cases with the assistance of other corrupt prosecutors or prosecutors featured in cases of corruption, of abuse of power or other offenses, you discredit the whole exercise and the process loses meaning,” stated Gligor.
The former APO chief Viorel Morari, who was arrested last week, was charged with abuse of power and falsification of public documents. He is now in remand detention.
