The head of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office will provide explanations to the Inspectorate of Prosecutors after an audio recording in which Veronica Dragalin threatens her inferiors with arrest and handcuffing before their children’s eyes was made public. The chief anticorruption prosecutor said that she does not have the prerogative to dismiss prosecutors who are suspected of corruption and does not have conclusive evidence to prove their guilt, IPN reports.
Veronica Dragalin said the dissemination of the audio recording of her meeting with inferiors in the public space is illegal. She noted that even if she suspects her colleagues of taking bribe, she cannot prove this and does not have powers to dismiss them.
“The recording was made illegally, without my permission. We discussed confidential things that should have remained inside our staff. I do not decide the career of prosecutors. It is the Superior Council of Prosecutors that does this. I do not have powers to dismiss someone even if I suspect that they are corrupt. I have such suspicions, but I do not have conclusive evidence to start a criminal case over this. But I, as the chief, as the person who can assess if a prosecutor handled a case properly or improperly, can realize the nature of the persons with whom I speak. But I cannot fire persons whom I suspect of being corrupt. I knew we have corrupt persons in the system, but I was nevertheless shocked that I was recorded in a meeting in which I was speaking about leaks of information and about the gravity of this thing and this recording was later disseminated in the public space. This really shocked me,” Veronica Dragalin stated in the program “At 360 Degrees” on Radio Moldova.
The chief of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office will now have to provide explanations to the Inspectorate of Prosecutors after, in the meeting with her inferiors, she said that she was impatient to enter in person their homes, with teams of persons in balaclavas, at 6am, to arrest and handcuff them before the eyes or their children and spouses.
“I was notified by the Inspectorate of Prosecutors of the existence of such a complaint against me. I was given a period of time to provide written explanations on the issue. This is not the first time and I presume it is also not the last time I am involved in a disciplinary procedure. It happened twice earlier. I will provide written explanations to the inspector prosecutor and we will then obey the procedure,” stated Veronicăi Dragalin.
Recently, two members of the parliamentary group of the Bloc of Communists and Socialists, Diana Caraman and Valeriu Muduc, filed a complaint to the Superior Council of Prosecutors by which they ask to examine the behavior of Veronica Dragalin in her meeting with inferiors. Later, the complaint was remitted to the Inspectorate of Prosecutors.
