EXCLUSIVE // Vladimir Voronin involved in a criminal case
Administration of the President of the Republic of Moldova - which was wielding its mandate in 2006 - is criminally investigated for ultra vires. The file was started on the fact of granting Moldovan citizenship to an Italian who is accused of immigrants' seizure in his country. The target of the investigation is none other than the former head of state - Vladimir Voronin.
Deschide.MD editorial office found out about this case from the scheduled hearings from the Buiucani Law Court. Today, at 4:15 p.m., there will be pronounced the decision on the file Cesare Lodeserto against the Presidency of Moldova. The Italian citizen sued the President Nicolae Timofti after he withdrew the citizenship granted by Voronin, following inquiries from the investigative bodies.
"The commission near the President of Moldova, which examines the applications for granting or withdrawing citizenship, received a file from the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications (MITC), which requested and argued the need to withdraw the citizenship of Moldova from the citizen Cesare Lodeserto. The dossier came from MITC, because this is the procedure, but they did it at the request of the Security and Intelligence Service (SIS)," explained to us the Secretary General, Ion Paduraru, pointing out that this is the third case when the present head of state withdraws somebody's citizenship.
If to retrace the story's steps, we find out that on the name of the Italian citizen Lodeserto was started also a criminal case on the fact of granting his citizenship in the spring of 2015.
"Based on an exchange of information received from our counterparts, we started a criminal dossier in order to check effectively and qualitatively the received data. At one point, I understood that there is about ultra vires, (art. 328, Penal Code) not about human trafficking, so we have forwarded the dossier to Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office," stated to us Iurie Podarilov, chief of the Center for combating trafficking in human beings in the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA).
We could not find out details from the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office, while the chief prosecutor - Viorel Morari - has disconnected the phone during the whole day of Monday, inclusively today, until the publication time of this article. His colleagues told us that Morari is on a business trip. We managed to find out from the Deputy of the institution, Adrian Popenco, that the case is under investigation and has not been dismissed. We could not find out if Voronin already has a statute in this investigation or whether he is to be given one.
Instead, in addition to the statements collected by the responsible institutions, we obtained several documents from which, undoubtedly, results that Vladimir Voronin will be investigated criminal in this case. Therefore, in the Informative Note, the document by which Voronin was informed that the Italian wants Moldovan citizenship, along with his comrade of Romanian origin, namely the former president writes: "I agree for both" and undersigns.
Vladimir Voronin decided to make the Italian into a Moldovan with proper acts, despite the fact that Artur Reshetnikov - his advisor, then - proposed him the rejection of this request. This is formulated in the first informative note, which dates from February 2006. Voronin preferred, however, another alternative: to accept, but to check the "criminal past" of the applicants for citizenship.
Six months later, Reshetnicov comes back with a second informative note, where he tells Voronin that after the checking, the Moldovan Embassy in Italy was informed on the telephone by the Prefecture of Lecce that, following the accusations of human sequestration, abuse of means of correction and violence against immigrants in the center of the "Regina Pacis", the prosecution's office filed a criminal dossier on the name of Mr. Lodeserto, the case is still being investigated.
It’s curious that even this fact did not stop Voronin to decide: " I agree for both".
We tried to get an explanation from the Communist leader, but the party communicators have told us that they would give us a reaction only when they have the opportunity to discuss the subject with Vladimir Voronin. For now, they say, the agenda does not allow this.
The editorial office of Deschide.MD will return with a reaction from the former president, obviously, if he will offer one.
According to the law, the ultra vires, committed by a person holding a public dignity position, shall be punished with imprisonment from 6 to 10 years with deprivation of the right to occupy certain positions or to practice certain activities for a period of 10 to 15 years.