Moldova's prosecutorial merger stirs national security concerns
The project to merge the specialized prosecutor’s offices – the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and the Prosecutor's Office for the Fight Against Organized Crime and Special Causes – into a new structure has sparked intense debates.
The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office warns that this change could negatively impact national security.
According to the project registered in Parliament last week, the goal is to create an institution aimed at strengthening the mechanisms to fight corruption and organized crime at the national level. The document has raised concerns, even among deputies in the majority.
Olesea Stamate, a ruling party MP and former head of Parliament's Legal, Appointments, and Immunities Commission, argues that merging the specialized prosecutor’s offices is not the best approach to strengthening anti-corruption efforts. The parliamentary opposition contends that it has not received compelling justifications for the merger, while extra-parliamentary opposition representatives claim that the initiative is merely a pretext to remove Veronica Dragalin from office. The General Prosecutor's Office has also weighed in on the project. The institution anticipates that the reorganization, as proposed by Parliament, will lead to delays in the investigation of criminal cases currently managed by the two specialized prosecutor’s offices.
The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, one of the institutions affected by the reorganization, has presented its opinion. In a statement, the institution states that "a single specialized prosecutor’s office raises the risk of corruption," and the project would violate several constitutional principles. Commenting on the project’s authors’ argument that creating a single prosecutor's office is necessary due to "several deficiencies in how some law enforcement institutions have acted in preventing and fighting corruption," the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office argues that this is based on false premises, as its activity has been praised by the Government and international institutions.
The initiative to merge the two specialized prosecutor's offices is set to undergo public consultations.
Translation by Iurie Tataru
