EX-DEMOCRAT SURRENDERS TO MOLDOVAN AUTHORITIES

Former Moldovan parliamentarian Constantin Tutu, a Democrat, voluntarily surrendered to the Moldovan authorities on Friday, reported the Prosecutor General's Office. He was delivered to the Albita/Leuseni border-crossing station by Romanian officers and handed in to the Moldovan law enforcement.

“Constantin Tutu will now be given to the Anti-Corruption Prosecution Service [aka "Anticoruptie"] for carrying out criminal prosecution actions. He will familiarize himself with the accusations brought against him, and will undergo an interrogation in the framework of the criminal case on deriving of benefit from influence and on illicit enrichment. According to the decision of the National Commission for Emergency Situations, Tutu will remain in quarantine for 14 days”, the Office wrote in its press release without mentioning his detention place.

As was already reported by Infotag, the Moldovan court issued an arrest warrant for Tutu in September 2019. He was charged of involvement in particularly grand amber smuggling, in cigarette and ethanol smuggling schemes, and of deriving of benefit from influence when a Deputy of the Moldovan Parliament from then-ruling Democratic Party in 2016-2019.

Constantin Tutu fled from Moldova immediately after the change of power in June 2016 – together with his party and country boss, business tycoon Vladimir Plahotniuc. After that, Moldovan papers reported that they saw Tutu in Odessa several times. And at the end of 2019, it became known that Tutu, walking on foot, crossed the Romanian border at a border-crossing station in the Chernovtsy oblast [region] of Ukraine. Constantin Tutu has a dual citizenship – of the Republic of Moldova and Romania.

Constantin Tutu is a prominent Moldovan Muay Thai kick-boxer and K-1 fighter. In 2010, he stood court as a murder suspect, but was acquitted. After that he gradually became an essential-most figure in the closest surrounding of country master Vladimir Plahotniuc, being in charge of his personal security.

In July 2019, the Investigation Department of the Russian Ministry of the Interior demanded urgently to arrest Plahotniuc on charges of organization of a criminal community and of participation in it. The Russian law enforcement are accusing Plahotniuc and Tutu of 28 episodes of particularly grand drug trafficking and of the organization of an international drug syndicate.