Ilan Shor expiated his guilt by denouncing Vlad Filat. This statement made recently in an interview by Prosecutor General Eduard Harunjen caused indignation and consternation among many. The authors of a new Sic! article decided to see what Eduard Harunjen said precisely and what the Penal Code says in this regard.
“Under the law, if the person, before the police find out from other sources, admits that he gave bribe, this is automatically absolved. To make it clear, Shor expiated his guilt for giving bribe by making this denouncement. As regards the other counts, there is a prosecution tactic. Everything goes according to our plan. We should not anticipate things. There is logic in everything we do,” said then the prosecutor general.
The authors of the Sic! article note the first thing that should be remarked is that the persecutor general’s statement wasn’t presented correctly by many media outlets. Harunjen referred specifically to bribe giving, without suggesting somehow that Ilan Shor will be pardoned completely for the other offenses in which he was involved, as some of the news items suggested.
Asked by the Sic! authors, head of the Legal Resources Center of Moldova Vladislav Gribincea explained that indeed, Article 325, paragraph 4 of the Penal Code stipulates that the person is absolved of bribe giving (not yet of other offenses such as appropriation or money laundering) only if the self-denouncement comes when the prosecution bodies do not know about the committed offense.
According to the expert, it is hard to relate Shor’s case to such a situation. “The stealing of money from Banca de Economii started long before the denouncement. I cannot believe that the prosecutors didn’t investigate the version that the thefts were committed by corrupting politicians. If such a version existed, Ilan Shor definitely realized this and exoneration here is not possible,” stated Vladislav Gribincea. In other words, by his statement, the prosecutor general suggests that the prosecution bodies didn’t presume that a state official was somehow involved in the bank frauds.
The article authors say that Ilan Shor’s denouncement is dated October 13, 2015. But both Vlad Filat and Ilan Shor were summoned and questioned in the case of Banca de Economii before this date, both the same day, on July 21, 2015, two month and a half before the denouncement. At that moment, Shor was already investigated as a suspect, since February 2015. Therefore, the exemption from criminal liability is unjustified, according to them.
The full article in the Romanian can be found on sic.md. Sic! is a project implemented by IPN News Agency with support from Soros Foundation Moldova.
