Plenum of Supreme Justice Court finds as illegal penal proceedings on Serafim Urecheanu’s “ambulances case”

The Plenum of the Supreme Justice Court (CSJ) decided, on Monday, October 23, that the appeal submitted by the General Prosecutor can not be admitted and has maintained the decision adopted by the Enlarged Penal Board of Judges of the Supreme Justice Court on May 17, 2006, by which a series of penal investigation documents in the case of the leader of “Moldova Noastra” Alliance (AMN) were declared invalid. According to a press release of AMN, the decision includes 5 compartments, by means of which the following documents issued by the penal investigation bodies on the name of Urecheanu are annulled: the order of the penal investigation office of the Center for Combating Economic Crime and Corruption (CCECC), Vadim Tomuz of December 3, 2004 (interdiction to leave the country), the order of the prosecutor Marcel Tomuz of December 7 and 20, 2004 (charging order), the order of the prime-deputy-prosecutor Valeriu Gurbulea, of August 1, 2005 on creating a penal investigation group. Through the first compartment of the decision maintained by CSJ, the Prosecution is obliged to liquidate the violations against Serafim Urecheanu and to immediately cancel penal investigation. Vasile Rahlea, Urecheanu’s lawyer considers that on the grounds of the 350th article of the Penal Procedure Code, the Court of Centru district from Chisinau, due to the decision of CSJ, must issue the quashing sentence of the penal case (the so-called “ambulances case”). The meeting of this court is planned for November 9, starting 10:00. Previously, the General Prosecution Office disagreed with the decision of the Enlarged Penal Board of CSJ and refused to execute it. At present it can not be contested in any way at national scale. Although one year has passed since the parliamentary immunity of Urecheanu was canceled, the lawsuit against him is still at the preliminary stage of debates. A series of court’s meetings were postponed because the panel of judges was incomplete or because the representative of the Prosecution Office was missing, and the last meetings – because the final decision of CSJ in the lawsuit which ended on Monday had to come. Urecheanu is accused of embezzlement when purchasing 40 ambulances in 2003. Several politicians, representatives of the civil society qualified this investigation as a political command. Officials of the Council of Europe solicited repeatedly the government from Chisinau to abstain from such actions.