Verdict Pronouncement in Filat’s Case Postponed to 7 May

Former Prime Minister Vlad Filat was to learn on Monday, 29 April, the verdict in the case in which he is accused of money laundering on a particularly large scale. However, the verdict was postponed due to the fact that a member of the court panel is on annual leave. The prosecutor in the case asked to apply a 7-year imprisonment and a fine of 12.8 million lei to the former prime minister, equivalent to the money that was the object of money laundering. Sentencing in the case is due on 7 May. The case has been pending since January 2019 and has gone through several periods of stagnation. Prosecutors allege that in 2013, Vlad Filat, then prime minister, knew from his relative Ion Rusu that he had received 12,847,902 lei illegally from Banca de Economii. According to prosecutors, through companies managed by Ion Rusu, the former prime minister converted and transferred the money received to the account of a non-resident company to pay for campaign consulting services for the parliamentary elections. Vlad Filat considers the case a “fiction” of Plahotniuc’s prosecutor’s office. “In a truly democratic state and with fair justice, such case cannot take place,” he wrote on Facebook. Filat was detained on 15 October 2015 for passive corruption and benefiting from influence. The politician was left without parliamentary immunity by a vote of 79 MPs at the request of former Prosecutor General Corneliu Gurin. The request came after Ilan Sor’s denunciation.