MOLDOVAN MoI COLLABORATES INFORMALLY WITH TRANSNISTRIAN INTERIOR IN KIDNAPPING PEOPLE – LAWYER

The Moldovan Ministry of the Interior collaborates informally with the Transnistrian interior ministry thus helping Tiraspol to kidnap people, presumes Ion Manole, the lawyer of the non-governmental Promo-LEX Association.

At his news conference held in Chisinau on Tuesday, Manole provided some new details of the last week’s detention in Moldova of Interior General Gennady Kuzmichev and of his forcible transportation over to Transnistria.

The lawyer called the incident “the kidnapping of a Republic of Moldova citizen [against whom several litigations have been initiated in Transnistria], and remarked that Promo-LEX activists had first come across such practice yet in the early 2000s.

“There happened not two or three such instances – they are numbered in tens. Usually, a person concerned [usually having the citizenships of both the Republic of Moldova and of the unrecognized Transnistrian Moldovan Republic] is forced into a police car and delivered to the police inspectorate of the Bendery city [controlled jointly by the law enforcement from Moldova and Transnistria] where the person is given into the hands of Transnistrian power units. The Moldovan authorities thus commit a crime against their own fellow citizens and ignore Moldova’s international commitments. These documents stipulate notions like the presumption of innocence and guarantees of citizens’ personal security. But nobody in Moldova can nowadays feel safe because this very police of Moldova indulges the kidnapping of humans”, stated Ion Manole.

In his words, the European Court for Human Rights is now examining 3 claims lodged by Moldova citizens the victims of kidnapping.

“These are men named Berzan, Negruta and Filin who were handed over to the Transnistrian law enforcement or abducted by Transnistrian officers from the territory of the mainland Moldova. I am convinced the European Court will make a verdict condemning the inactivity of the RM authorities”, said Ion Manole.

Nicolae Tulusniuc, an eye-witness of the kidnapping of the former police general who was moving in one car together with Kuzmichev, stated at the news conference that Moldovan police officers were directly involved into Kuzmichev’s abduction.

“We were halted by two officers of the Moldovan Patrol Inspectorate, who were standing near their police jeep with license plates MAI 032. Speaking in Moldovan, they thrice demanded documents from Gennady Kuzmichev. When he came out of the car, they stated they had a photograph proving his over-speeding. In about 45 seconds, another jeep came to the place from behind us. Four well-built men in masks jumped out of it and on Kuzmichev. I believe all that was a police operation planned in advance”, said Nicolae Tulusniuc.

In his words, it took the officers 5-7 minutes to get down and tie up the general who somehow tore the masks off the faces of two of them and cried out their names.

“He called them Semerciuc and Arcan. Then the general was thrown into the jeep and off they went. I am ill with sugar diabetes and I live on insulin. At seeing that awful incident, I couldn’t utter a word and I felt unwell. By the way, the officers drove away my car together with all car documents – over to Tiraspol. When I asked the remaining officers what I should do here on the road – without my car and without documents, they did not say a word. They simply sat into their jeep and drove away, leaving me alone on the road”, said Tulusniuc.

Veaceslav Turcan, the Kuzmichev family’s lawyer, said that he had already written an official application for the Sectorul Buiucani Police Inspectorate of Chisinau, describing the kidnapping incident.

“As a lawyer, I have no idea about what is going on with my customer presently. I don’t know the name of the investigator running the Kuzmichev case, or accusations being presented to him. But the most terrible thing is that the leadership of the Moldovan Ministry of the Interior is involved into this scandal so overtly and directly. I guess that in any other country, should a similar development happen, the interior minister would tender resignation without a delay”, believes Turcan, who also presented the interests of ex-president of Transnistria Yevgeny Shevchuk, who is also wanted by Tiraspol for the crimes he had committed.

As was already reported by Infotag, the former head of the Transnistrian customs committee, ex-minister of the interior Gennady Kuzmichev is accused of major smuggling committed by an organized group that had functioned since 2012. The group organized considerable transit flows of goods via Transnistria – tobacco, cigarettes, ethanol, alcoholic beverages, meat, clothes etc. The goods were subjected to only fictitious customs procedures at Transnistrian customs houses, so the data were not included into the electronic database. Accordingly, the Transnistrian budget did not receive either customs or excise duties from such operations.

The investigation believes that the group’s contraband volume over the said years is assessed at approximately US$140 million, and kickbacks – at US$25 million. Kuzmichev and other participants in the criminal scheme used to ‘earn’ monthly up to US$2 million each.

After Vadim Krasnoselsky had won the presidential election in early 2017, the new Tiraspol government started a legal investigation into the activities of ex-president Yevgeny Shevchuk and some of his nearest subordinates. Some of them were arrested and have already been jailed. And against other suspects, investigations and litigations are still continuing. Shevchuk and Kuzmichev have managed to run away abroad.

The Moldovan and Transnistrian law enforcement have reached an accord to collaborate in catching and extraditing dangerous criminals.