Ex-BEM head sentenced to 13 years over €153M Moldovan Bank Fraud
A Chisinau court has sentenced Grigore Gacikevici, the former head of state-controlled Banca de Economii (BEM), to 13 years in prison following a first-instance ruling on Thursday, July 30.
The decision was delivered by Judge Ana Cucerescu at the Chisinau District Court, Buiucani seat. The ruling stems from a severed trial tied to the broader "Bank Fraud" scandal, which resulted in damages exceeding €153 million (approx. 3 billion MDL).
Gacikevici was brought into the courtroom in handcuffs, having been detained just a day prior in a separate case involving money laundering allegations.
Sentence demands and co-defendants
Prosecutors had sought a 15-year sentence for Gacikevici. They also requested 13-year prison terms for four other former BEM executives: Ana Vitiu, Mihail Bejenari, Leonid Belibov, and Alexandru Mișov.
According to the prosecution, the five former officials approved fraudulent loans between 2005 and 2012 in direct breach of banking regulations. The bank issued billions of lei in loans backed by severely overvalued collateral that failed to cover the borrowed amounts.
Investigators revealed that four individuals and 68 legal entities benefited from these fraudulent loans, causing a total loss of roughly 3 billion MDL to the financial institution.
A thirteen-year judicial saga
The criminal case was originally sent to court over 13 years ago, in April 2013, and was subsequently merged with nine other criminal cases involving the same defendants.
The proceedings suffered numerous delays over the years. The case was initially presided over by Judge Olga Cojocaru, who was removed from office in late 2025 after failing a mandatory judicial vetting evaluation.
Following the redistribution of the file to Judge Ana Cucerescu in early 2026, legal regulations required the trial to be restarted from scratch, even though the court had previously reached the defendant hearing phase.
Translation by Iurie Tataru
