CHISINAU: The Security and Intelligence Service of Moldova facilitated the arrest of Evghenia Gutsul, the head of Moldova's Gagauz auton...
CHISINAU: The Security and Intelligence Service of Moldova facilitated the arrest of Evghenia Gutsul, the head of Moldova's Gagauz autonomy, which is gross interference in court proceedings, defense lawyer Natalia Bayram told TASS.
"The Security and Intelligence Service as an institution absolutely not related to this case - they neither have a process status nor absolutely any rights in this case - approached the prosecutor general with a letter requesting to take all the measures to arrest Evghenia Gutsul. In other words, this is gross interference in the judicial act on the part of the Security and Intelligence Service," she said.
The defense believes that charges voiced in mass media by Moldovan government and law enforcement representatives that Gutsul allegedly took money from a criminal group, are unjustified.
"No these are absolutely ungrounded charges and the prosecutor did not present any evidence at all in this sense," she said.
"Charges of prosecutors pertain to less grave and grave crimes - they are qualified as such under Article 16 of the Criminal Code. However, the essence of charges and the body of evidence indicate that Evghenia Gutsul did not commit any criminal acts, meaning that there is no crime behavior in actions of Evghenia Gutsul," Bayram said.
Gutsul was detained on March 25 in the Chisinau airport and arrested for twenty days within the framework of a new criminal case administered by the Moldovan national anti-corruption center jointly with the Chisinau office of prosecutor.
Law enforcement officials motivated the arrest by suspicions that the politician would allegedly attempt to avoid justice. Gutsul refuted these arguments, drawing attention to the fact that she attends court sessions in another criminal case already for a year and regularly makes overseas business trips.
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