Parliament provided all the necessary tools to the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office to work in accordance with the law, Speaker Igor Grosu said after the MPs on Thursday increased the personnel units of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office. The official noted that the salary of prosecutors who passed the vetting will be raised, but the pressure on anticorruption prosecutors will be increased so as to have end results on high-profile cases, IPN reports.
On Thursday, the personnel units of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office was increased by 54 units by the votes of the PAS MPs. The Speaker said that together with the increase of the institutional capacity, the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office has all the levers to work without delays in the examination of files.
“We introduced additional positions at the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office as we have an assessment by the foreign partners, which shows that the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office has few investigation officers, few specialists in risk analysis. There are office spaces. I had to convince the group internally to make this infusion of what they need. We are also amending the legislation so that we no longer have speculations on the statute of limitations. They have all the tools. They will also be subject to vetting. The decision to increase their salary is another unpopular measure. We need to raise the salary of those who pass the vetting so that they have a guarantee and go into the battle resolutely. But as we give them all these things, we will also increase the pressure. I don’t see any other way. Excuses will no longer work. Otherwise, I will take them with me to the meetings with voters,” Speaker Igor Grosu stated in the program “The Shadow Cabinet” on JurnalTV channel.
He also said that the government had put on hold the bill to amend the Law on the Prosecutor’s Office. The decision comes after having given a first reading to a draft law according to which the prosecutor general is not selected based on the score obtained in the assessment of professionalism and integrity, but on the basis of the majority of votes of SCP members.
“There are discussions on how to choose the prosecutor - by scoring or by voting. But we already saw how scoring works. That’s why we thought of a mixed system. We decided to let the Superior Council of Prosecutors discuss because they will have to ultimately apply this instrument. We thought it wasn’t sensible to force the issue with these changes. We left the draft aside. If we need to intervene, we will intervene,” Igor Grosu noted.
According to the Superior Council of Prosecutors, six candidates have registered for the competition to fill the position of prosecutor general, including the current interim deputy head of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office Octavian Yakimovski and the current interim prosecutor general Ion Munteanu. Under the law, the prosecutor general is appointed by the President of the Republic of Moldova at the proposal of the SCP, for a seven-year term.
