Journalistic Investigations Center

The Minister of Justice is preparing a broad reform in the judiciary that would simplify court proceedings to the maximum and establish equal rules for all parties, be they ordinary citizens or the country’s president. Alexandru Tănase, Minister of Justice, made this statement at the meeting of the Investigative Journalists Club on Friday, 5 February, which debated on the topic “Justice in Moldova: Does It Or Does It Not Protect Human Rights?”

According to the Minister, the reform would cover all areas – criminal, civil, administrative – and would ensure equal rights to justice to all citizens thus increasing their chances to a fair trial. “People will not keep walking from court to court, as it happens today due to the procedural provisions in force but very clear competences will be established for all links of the judiciary,” the Minister of Justice said. All cases, regardless of the status of the person sued will go to first instance courts where the evidence will be examined, witnesses will be heard, and not as it is happening now – when it is about challenging a government decision, one must go to the Court of Appeal, to sue a general, one must go to the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ) etc. The appellate procedure will be maintained for some cases where the accuracy of examination of the substance will be checked. The Supreme Court of Justice is to become, as it is in the entire world, a court of cassation that would examine only the accuracy of application of the law and would not consider evidence and witnesses’ testimonies. According to A. Tănase, the reform would bring vertical clarity, from top to bottom, would shorten court proceedings, would limit the possibility of following the judicial path from first instance courts to SCJ three times without sense, as well as would make judges’ work easier.

The Minister also announced that the legal profession is to be essentially reformed, which would also ensure a better protection of human rights in Moldova. A draft law in this sense has already been approved by the government and the line parliamentary commission, having positive advisory opinions from the Superior Council of Magistracy (SCM) and a number of international organizations, including the Council of Europe. “We are creating a new structure and opening regional lawyers’ offices, we will for the first time establish quality standards for the practice of the legal profession and will put order in the disciplinary proceedings.” A. Tănase said. A principled stand of the reform is that former prosecutors and judges should not in the future be admitted to the legal profession ex officio, without taking an exam. “If we are talking about eradicating corruption, nepotism, abuse of power and so on, it is important that those who had been prosecutors to take their prosecutor careers to an end, the same for judges,” the Minister of Justice opinionated.

“We can criticize lawyers and it would be naïve to believe that in a state where everything is bad, the legal profession is ideal. It is important for us to understand the reasons for such a state of things,” the Minister said. In his opinion, during the Soviet as well as the recent communist governance, the legal profession was that necessary evil that those governances could not go without in order to give the appearance of legitimacy to the acts of justice. “Therefore, the legal profession was abandoned and no reforms existed in view of strengthening that institution, nobody needed a functional institution,” A. Tănase said.

Referring to the serious gaps that the Moldovan judiciary has, the Minister underlined that at present, after the change of the government, there are no problems related to the independence of the judiciary but only in regard to the functioning of the judiciary and integrity of judges. “The dependence of the judiciary in the most serious form is when it relates to the Executive. At present, there are no pressures whatsoever from the state authorities. There have been no incidents, or at least none that I know of, of members of the government or other officials interfering and giving orders to the courts how to try a case or what judgments to issue,” A. Tănase said. He underlined that the judiciary does not have even financial dependence on other state authorities because it prepares its budget independently, without restrictions and censoring from the state and it is the only sector that, despite the crisis, received in full the amounts it had requested for a good functioning.

“On the other hand, the Ministry of Justice has the right and claim to impose certain game rules in order to eradicate the most serious problems we have inherited – corruption – that undermines and makes the act of justice itself inexistent,” the Minister said. According to him, the judicial corps must be improved in order to save them from “moral putrefaction” that affected a part thereof: “There are not so many corrupt judges who are obedient to the state authorities as people may think. There are only several such magistrates about whom the press has written many times and whom everyone knows. If only 10% of judges were shaken and cleaned, you would see how well things would go in the judiciary. I am not saying that things would go as well as in France or Germany where such a concept as corruption in the judiciary does not even exist, but it would neither be the current situation when everything is for sale.” The Minister said that actions would be taken using exclusively legal instruments, i.e. through the Superior Council of Magistracy, the only body that is competent to sanction judges. A. Tănase mentioned that the Disciplinary Board and the Qualification Board of SCM have been formed and, starting next week, they would start considering all the complaints against judges. “All complaints will be solved. We will be very exacting and will insist that very tough sanctions are imposed on those who violate the law,” the Minister said.

The judges guilty of cases lost at the ECHR will also come before the Disciplinary Board and Qualification Board. The Minister of Justice said that the situation in this regard is alarming: “The avalanche of cases lost only is to come. All the wrongdoings that were committed during eight years of communist government make themselves known. In January alone, 25 cases were communicated by the Strasbourg Court to the Moldovan Government, which comes to one case per day. Even though all those wrongdoings were not committed by us, as a government we are obliged to repair this situation.” Among the cases communicated, there is an extremely serious one that will cost the Moldovan Government around 20 million US dollars, which is a record amount for our country but also in the ECHR practice. This is a case for recovery of a debt by a third company for delivery of electricity from Romania to Moldova, 15 years ago. “At that time, half of the amount had been paid and half of it remained unpaid. The debt was later ceded to a third company that went to court to recover the money. They won the case and everything would have been fine if our economic courts had not interfered and, through a decision, reviewed and canceled the previous judgment, and thus, a debt that belonged at least apparently to a private company became the state’s debt,” A. Tănase said. According to him, the government has a few months at its disposal to solve the case amiably in order to avoid the ECHR conviction, but it would also be very difficult because the necessary funds must be found. The Minister added that he would demand that the judges who are guilty in this case be imposed harsh sanctions.

The meeting of the Investigative Journalism Club was organized by the Investigative Journalism Center under the Media for Human Rights Campaign, project carried out with the support of the US Embassy in Moldova.

6 February 2010

Investigative Journalism Center