​COURT UPHOLDS 30-DAY ARREST OF VEACESLAV PLATON

On Friday, the Chisinau Appeals Chamber upheld the Sectorul Buiucani court decision on 30-day arrest of entrepreneur Veaceslav Platon, accused of financial machinations.

Businessman’s lawyer Eduard Rudenco said that Platon’s stay in prison #13 will last until February 24 at least.

“We demanded changing of the prevention measure for our client, but without result. What we achieved is just inclusion of a very interesting document in materials of the case against him – a petition to Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) from Platon’s Kiev lawyer. According to the document, extradition of Platon to Moldova has never taken place. Moreover, a sitting of Pechery court of Kiev was conducted on January 24, where this issue was discussed. The sitting was postponed because according to the Ukrainian law, the extradited person should be present at the hearing. An unprecedented situation occurred when a person was convoyed to Moldova, but neither the Ukrainian PGO, nor the Kiev court had ever taken any decision about this”, he said.

Rudenco also said that the Appeals Chamber declined a number of defenders’ petitions.

“First, the court declined lawyers’ petition on allowing Grigore Petrenco to participation in the trial. Later, we found out that this decision was taken by Chairman of the Appeals Chamber panel of judges Iurie Iordan without knowledge of his two colleagues. On this basis, we demanded that Iordan to be disqualified. However, later, another judge Iurie Melentiu left him in his post – head of the panel of judges on Platon case. We regard all these decisions as doubtful, but will keep protecting our client’s interests by all accessible means”, Rudenco said.

The next hearing of Platon case on the merits was preliminarily set to February 15.