The magistrates of the Chisinau Court with Ciocana headquarters completely rejected the prosecutors’ request for the application of the preventive measure – pre-trial detention for a period of 30 days, regarding the suspended head of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, Viorel Morari, as unfounded. The decision was adopted recently by Judge Maia Tertea. The information was confirmed for SafeNews.md by Morari’s lawyer, Vasile Foltea. Viorel Morari was released from the courtroom.
The meeting started at 15:30. Viorel Morari’s defenders also submitted a request demanding that the hearing be a public one.
I requested that during the hearing the judge examines the prosecutor’s approach to the application of the preventive measure – the pre-trial detention should be a public one, so that everyone, including media representatives, has access to this hearing. To know the unfounded and unproven arguments of the prosecutors in order to be able to draw objective and correct conclusions, not only from the press releases of the prosecutor’s office and not only from the position of the defense, which we expose in front of the cameras, said Vasile Foltea, Viorel’s defender Morari.
The lawyers’ request was, however, rejected by the magistrate.
During the discussion with the press, the defender wanted to specify that the suspended head of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office pleads not guilty, and the incriminated accusations are unaccompanied by evidence.
My client pleads not guilty. All the accusations are unfounded, and not based on any proven evidence, said the lawyer Vasile Foltea.
We remind you that today, Wednesday, January 20, the magistrates of the Chisinau court, based in Ciocana, met in a session to examine the request of the prosecutors who requested 30 days of arrest for the suspended head of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, Viorel Morari.
Viorel Morari was escorted to the courthouse around 14:00, without his lawyers being notified about the hearing.
None of Morari’s lawyers were informed about the examination of the application. Right now the prosecutor called us and said he was waiting for us in the courtroom. It is a mystery to me how this meeting was set. It was not coordinated with us, the defenders’ agenda was not taken into account. So we learned that the hearing was called only when Mr. Morari was already brought to court, mentioned Vasile Foltea, Viorel Morari’s lawyer.
We state that according to the regulation, the representatives of the court are the ones who should have preventively notified the parties about the date and time in which the examination submitted by the prosecutor was to be examined in the hearing.
We remind you that on Tuesday, January 19, 2020, the suspended head of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, Viorel Morari, was summoned by the General Prosecutor’s Office for a hearing at 14:00, in order to bring new charges in another criminal case, generically called “Vento”. As a result, he was detained by PCCOCS prosecutors for a term of 72 hours, being escorted to the detention facility of the Chisinau Police Department.
On Wednesday, January 20, a press release issued by the General Prosecutor’s Office announced that the Prosecutor’s Office for Combating Organized Crime and Special Cases had forwarded to the suspended head of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, Viorel Morari, the accusation for four charges and filed an appeal for application of the preventive measure – pre-trial detention for 30 days.
Viorel Morari is accused of “excess of power”, “forgery in public documents”, “illegal detention or arrest” and “knowingly prosecuting an innocent person” – actions committed against the co-owners of the gas station network “Vento”. The latter were recently rehabilitated in law, after prosecutors concluded that in 2018 they were persecuted, detained, arrested, deprived of wealth and illegally prosecuted in a case file.
At the same time, the case prosecutor, Renata Anici, argued the need to apply pre-trial detention for the suspended head of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office by evading responsibility and leaving the country through the Transnistrian region.
It’s an aberration. My client is already a defendant in a criminal case, he appears at every court hearing, he is present at every subpoena. It is not excluded that this detention was organized especially so that Morari could not appear at the next court hearing. We cannot understand what is the interest of the prosecution and of the alleged injured party, Veaceslav Platon, to block the trial “, said Vasile Foltea, one of Viorel Morari’s defenders.
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