MP of Moldova's Democratic Party stripped off parliamentary immunity
15:14 | 19.09.2019 Category: Political
Chisinau, 19 September /MOLDPRES/ - The parliament today approved a request by acting Prosecutor General Dumitru Robu on lifting the parliamentary immunity of a lawmaker of the Moldovan Democratic Party (PDM), Vladimir Cebotari. Fifty three MPs voted for stripping Cebotari off immunity. The PDM lawmakers did not participate in the voting and walked out of the session hall.
Today morning, the acting prosecutor general also demanded the lifting of the immunity of an MP of the Shor Party, Petru Jardan. The request was postponed, on grounds that Jardan is not in Moldova.
Acting Prosecutor General Dumitru Robu unveiled to the plenum the reason for which he had demanded stripping PDM MP Vladimir Cebotari off immunity. Robu said that “conclusive evidence was managed, which shows suspicions that lawmaker Vladimir Cebotari, on the period of the 2013 year, by using his office situation, by abuse of power, took over the control over the state enterprise Chisinau International Airport in the interest of an organized criminal group.”
The lawmaker is suspected of embezzlement of the state’s wealth, abuse of power and abuse of office.
Vladimir Cebotari gave a speech at the parliament’s rostrum, in which he said that more colleagues had warned him that he would be stripped off immunity.
“I know what comes next; yet, I came to the country deliberately, hoping that I will be put questions, to actually see what unlawful things I committed. It should be quite clear what I am charged with: I am accused that I was member of a commission which carried out a technical evaluation and which, in particular, approved the inclusion of the tax on modernization in the content of the contract on the airport’s granting to concession. The first cabinet decision was approved in 2012; I had no capacity in that government. Who were the cabinet members at that time? Not Mrs. Maia Sandu?” Cebotari said.
The PDM faction described the demands on the lift of the parliamentary immunity as “political settling of accounts”
The parliamentary majority has earlier lift the immunity of Ilan Shor, convicted in the first instance court in the bank fraud file, as well as lawmaker Marina Tauber and Reghina Apostolova.
