Journalistic Investigations Center

At the end of last week, Chisinau Court of Appeal obliged the Ministry of Information Development (MID) to provide to the Investigative Journalism Center (CIN) information about the cars owned by the Members of the Moldovan Parliament.

In October 2009, CIN journalists requested from MID information about the transportation units (type, production year and registration year) that are registered in the names of Moldovan MPs. The list of Moldovan MPs was attached to the request.

Since the respective individuals are holding public offices and, according to the legislation, must declare their properties, we decided to verify the honesty of those elected by the people and to check the income declarations they made during the electoral campaign of July 2009 against what is in reality. We made similar requests to MID during the two electoral ballots of 2009 in order to check if the information contained in the declarations made to the Central Electoral Commission by the candidates to MP offices was true. At that time, MID answered that that information was private and could not be made public. After the MID leadership changed, we made another request to them but received the same answer.

This case was the first one started against the current government of Moldova, which had declared that it would put emphasis on transparency and openness to the public in its activity. The court of appeal judgment can be appealed to the Supreme Court of Justice.

In the past five years, CIN has won 18 cases against state agencies for obstructing access to public interest information. Nonetheless, so far, no public officer has been punished for obstructing access to public interest information.

Cornelia Cozonac,
Investigative Journalism Center

For more details please contact:
Mihai Tanas, lawyer, 069319027