The MPs of the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) assert the prosecutor general lied to the whole country when he said that the ex-director of the Security and Intelligence Service Vasile Botnari got a suspended sentence. According to them, Botnari was only fined in the case concerning the expulsion of the seven Turkish teachers, IPN reports.
“The case of the seven Turkish teachers shocked national and international public opinion in 2018. Then, everyone was stupefied – how can one take seven basically innocent persons from the street, put them on a plane and send them practically to life imprisonment? This is what primarily resulted from the Turkish court decisions. We were also convicted by the ECHR. At the end of 2019, we heard that a personage who was allegedly to blame was identified. This is Vasile Botnari, a good friend of Igor Dodon since 2007, when Igor Dodon promoted Vasile Botnari as head of the Transport Agency while serving as first deputy prime minister,” PAS MP Sergiu Litvinenco stated in a news conference.
The MP noted that two days ago, it was found out that the firmer SIS director was given a suspended sentence. “But today we found out that there was no suspended sentence actually. For the committed atrocity, Vasile Botnari was fined 88,000 lei. It’s incredible how one can allow something like this when a person committed such a crime,” he stated.
In such circumstances, the MPs seek explanations from the prosecutor general over his assertions that Vasile Botnari was given a suspended sentence. “Why did he keep the examination of this case secret? For the first time in my life, I see a court judgment being fully secret. Usually, the argued part of the decision is secret, if there is secret information, but the operative part is always public. How can we speak about such sentences in the 21st century?” asked Sergiu Litvinenco.
The MP wonders why the sentence wasn’t challenged by prosecutors. The time limit for doing this expired and the judgment became final. “These things generate reasonable suspicions about the independence of the current prosecutor general. Knowing that Vasile Botnari has been a friend of Igor Dodon since the time of the Communist government, we wonder if the prosecutor general could have been influenced by Igor Dodon so that he adopted such an absolutely embarrassing approach in relation to this case of maximum gravity,” said Sergiu Litvinenco.
In a TV program, Prosecutor General Alexandr Stoianoglo said the former SIS director was given a suspended sentence, but he didn’t give details. The next day, the Prosecutor General’s Office issued a press release, saying that the case was sent to court this February and the examined as a classified one. The sentence was given in July, but was classed as secret. It asked the court that tried the case to declassify the content of the case and to allow the sentence to be made public, but no response has come yet.
