{"id":443580,"date":"2017-03-09T17:13:56","date_gmt":"2017-03-09T17:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.moldova.org\/en\/?p=443580"},"modified":"2017-03-09T17:13:56","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T17:13:56","slug":"chisinau-notifies-russia-abusive-treatment-moldovan-officials-lack-cooperation-russian-laundromat-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moldova.org\/en\/chisinau-notifies-russia-abusive-treatment-moldovan-officials-lack-cooperation-russian-laundromat-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Chi\u0219in\u0103u notifies Russia about abusive treatment of Moldovan officials, lack of cooperation in “Russian Laundromat” case"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

On March 9th, the President of the Moldovan Parliament, Andrian Candu, and the Prime-Minister, Pavel Filip, together with the Interior and Justice Ministers, handed a note to the Ambassador of Russia to Moldova, Farit Muhametshin.<\/p>\n

The note reports a series of abuses committed by Russian border authorities towards officials from Moldova’s Parliament, Government, special services and parties of the governing coalition. According to the press-release of the Parliament<\/a>, after several requests of the Moldovan Foreign Ministry the abuses did not stop and even became more serious.<\/p>\n

The Moldovan officials are complaining about the abusive attempts of one Russian state institution to introduce international arrest warrants for several Moldovan politicians using\u00a0fake\u00a0<\/em>information or\u00a0distorted\u00a0<\/em>data, but which were rejected. In the case of one person, 15 (failed) requests were sent in this regard. Moreover, the Russian authorities even asked other countries to issue warrants, hoping that they would not check additional information. The note explains in details the retainings and abusive treatments towards the Moldovan officials- about 25 in the last months.<\/p>\n

Special “treatment” was also given to Moldovan prosecutors investigating the money laundering of\u00a0(already?) 22 billion US dollars originating from Russia and transferred through Moldindconbank- “Russian Laundromat”. After the prosecutors arrested several bank officials, charged some judges and magistrates and requested additional information from Russia, they started having stops and abusive controls at the entrance in the Federation. One Interior Ministry employee has been retained and abusively controlled for at least 35 times when entering or leaving a Moscow airport.<\/p>\n

The Moldovan authorities are concerned about the lack of cooperation from law enforcement institutions of Russia in the investigation committees of the “Russian Laundromat” case, thus violating several bilateral and international agreements.<\/p>\n

Speaker Candu and PM Filip handed the note to Ambassador Muhametshin, expressing their hope that the leadership of the Russian Federation will have an immediate intervention in stopping the abuses, conducted by one of the Russian Special Services (FSB?). Candu and Filip also communicated that Moldovan officials were asked to refrain from visiting Russia until further solution is implemented in this context.<\/p>\n

As a reaction, President Igor Dodon commented that the decision of stopping the Moldovan officials from going to Russia is\u00a0exaggerated,\u00a0<\/em>mentioning about\u00a0some possible disfunctionalities\u00a0<\/em>at the border. Dodon says that he would continue to go to Moscow and promote the state interests and the\u00a0strategic partnership with the Russian Federation<\/em>.<\/p>\n