Alexandru Bălan will be escorted to Republic of Moldova on Friday
Alexandru Bălan, the former deputy director of the Intelligence and Security Service (SIS), will be transferred to the Republic of Moldova on Friday, April 24. According to Romanian media reports, he will be escorted by the Romanian Police to the Albita Customs, where he will then be handed over to the Moldovan judicial authorities.
The Bucharest Court of Appeal approved the extradition of Alexandru Bălan on April 20. He had been sentenced in the Republic of Moldova to one year and six months in prison for disclosing state secrets.
Bălan, a former deputy of the SIS (the Information and Security Service of the Republic of Moldova) who holds both Romanian and Moldovan citizenship, consented to the extradition.
He was detained on September 8, 2025, in Timișoara and is accused of leaking state secrets related to Romania to the Belarusian secret services, which are aligned with Moscow.
After being held in preventive detention for several months, Bălan was subsequently placed under house arrest.
The operation to detain him was conducted under the auspices of EUROJUST, in cooperation with the intelligence services from the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary. The secret services from Chișinău also became involved in the final stages of the investigation.
Bălan was employed by the SIS, where he held several positions, eventually becoming the head of counterintelligence. In 2016, he was promoted to deputy director. Reports from Chisinau indicate that Bălan may have been involved in the repression of anti-communist protests in 2009, as well as in the escape of Russian blogger Eduard Baghirov, who was under investigation for organizing the protests of April 7.
