RESULTS OF CONTEST FOR PG TO BE CANCELED – JUSTICE MINISTER

The commission, created by the Ministry of Justice for selecting candidate for the post of Prosecutor General, was forced to revise the results of the selection, said Minister Olesea Stamate.

“Prosecutor General is a key position for any state and Moldova is not an exception. Understanding the importance of this figure, changes to the legislation were made to ensure that an honest, incorruptible professional will be appointed for this post. We applied the same criteria to selection of the Ministry of Justice commission, which had to evaluate candidates”, the official said.

According to her, the commission’s work was difficult because its members did not have complete information about candidates, while competent authorities refused to provide it. She said that the conducted contest does not meet criteria established by the law.

“In this connection, we had to use the information available in public space. Then, we returned to the contest, checked the additional data about candidates. We came to the conclusion that the latter will not affect the contest results. At the same time, we established that one of commission members has unreasonably graded candidates disproportionately – some received too low grades, others – too high. Excluding the unreasonably high score, the short list of candidates would look in the following way: Vladislav Gribincea, Alexandru Stoianoglo, Oleg Crismaru and Stefan Gligor. Candidate Veaceslav Soltan would have not passed the selection”, Stamate said.

She published a part of grades, put by members of the contest commission members. It is about those who gave their consent for this: Olesea Stamate, Sergiu Baesu, Igor Botan and James Hamilton. The minister did not disclose the name of the commission member, who gave disproportionate grades. Besides the above-mentioned commission members, it includes ex-prosecutor Dumitru Postovan, who was delegated by Speaker of the Parliament and ex-judge Raisa Botezatu.

“Given all these facts, as Minister and member of the selection commission, I cannot transmit the list of candidates to the Superior Council of Prosecutors. The Government is politically responsible for the justice reform. Thus, I will sign an order on canceling the results of the contest”, Stamate said.