Author: Cibotaru Mihaela

Mai multe organizații neguvernamentale au elaborat un document ce prezintă acțiunile de discreditare și denigrare la adresa OSC-urilor din partea persoanelor publice, funcționarilor publici, bloggerilor și mass-media afiliate, ce au avut loc în perioada septembrie 2016 – decembrie 2017. Documentul a fost elaborat în contextul înrăutățirii mediului de activitate al organizațiilor societății civile (OSC) din Moldova și a creșterii numărului de atacuri orchestrate la adresa acestora pe parcursul ultimilor doi ani.

Autorii documentului au vrut să prezinte o imagine cât mai amplă a acțiunilor de atac și să determine autoritățile publice, instituțiile media și orice alte entități sau persoane ce susțin respectivele atacuri să se oprească și să permită OSC-urilor să activeze liber. Autorii au intenționat să atragă atenția asupra faptului că atacurile împotriva societății civile sunt nu doar un pericol pentru funcționarea OSC-urilor, dar și o amenințare la adresa democrației.

În mare parte, atacurile documentate reprezintă articole mass-media sau intervenții/declarații publice care prezintă ONG-urile drept organizații ce promovează interesele țărilor străine sau sunt afiliate partidelor politice. Totodată, au fost înregistrate cazuri de excludere a OSC-urilor din procesul de elaborare a politicilor publice sau au fost lansate inițiative legislative menite să deterioreze mediul de activitate al OSC-urilor și chiar să limiteze funcționarea lor. Scopul atacurilor asupra OSC-urilor pare să fie descurajarea sectorului asociativ de a se implica activ în afacerile publice sau de a critica inițiativele legislative din parte guvernării care pun în pericol democrația.

Informația inclusă în document a fost obținută din resursele mass-media disponibile online și rețelele de socializare, precum și din analiza cantitativă și calitativă a acestora. Monitorizarea nu este exhaustivă.

Radiografia atacurilor asupra organizațiilor neguvernamentale din Republica Moldova este un document „viu”, ce urmează a fi actualizat în cazul înregistrării noilor atacuri asupra OSC-urilor.

Documentul este deschis pentru semnare și pentru alte OSC-uri.

Semnatari:

• Centrul de Resurse Juridice din Moldova (CRJM)
• Amnesty International Moldova
• Institutul pentru Politici și Reforme Europene (IPRE)
• CPR Moldova
• Centrul pentru Politici și Studii de Sănătate (Centrul PAS)
• Asociația pentru Democrație Participativă „ADEPT”
• Asociația Presei Independente (API)
• Asociația Promo-LEX
• WatchDog.md
• Transparency International-Moldova (TI-Moldova)
• Institutul de Politici Publice (IPP)
• IDIS „Viitorul” (IDIS)
• Asociația pentru o Guvernare Eficientă și Responsabilă (AGER)
• Asociația pentru Politica Externă (APE)
• Centrul Internațional „La Strada”

On 5 February 2018, a press release was published on the website of the Prosecutor General's Office, which states that during the year 2017, judges authorized 3,142 prosecutors' applications regarding the tapping and recording of conversations and images. The press release also states that during the past year, a non-governmental organization provided information according to which "telephone tapping is being used too often, running to tens of thousands" and "this information being analyzed ... and compared to the real state of things, obtained from legal and public sources, there have been proven great differences”. In October 2017, the Legal Resources Centre from Moldova (LCRM) published an infographic with statistical data regarding the interception of telephone conversations in the Republic of Moldova between 2006 and the first semester of 2017. LCRM compiled this table based on statistical data published by the Agency for Administration of Judicial Courts (AAJC).

The data used by the Prosecutor General's Office differs considerably from the data published by the AAJC, which has the task to collect and publish judicial statistics. The AAJC report on judicial statistics for 2017 is not yet available. Still, the statistical report for the first nine months of 2017 is available. According to it, between 1 January and 30 September 2017, the courts accepted 9,471 prosecutors' requests to authorize interception of telephone conversations. It is surely clear that other interceptions have been also authorized during the last 3 months of 2017.

The number of telephone tapping for 2017 published by the Prosecutor General's Office (3,142) is at least 3 times lower than the nine-month figures of 2017 published by the AAJC (9,471). The difference between the official statistics of the AAJC and the data used by the Prosecutor General's Office raises serious concerns that are to be explained by these institutions.

Addition (7 February 2018): Following several requests to clarify the difference between the data submitted by the Prosecutor General's Office and the AAJC regarding the number of requests for authorization of telephone interceptions, we reiterate that this should be done by the concerned institutions. It should be noted that there is a difference between the data provided by the Prosecutor General's Office in its annual activity reports and those presented by the AAJC for several years regarding the number of requests for the authorization of telephone interceptions (see, for example, the annual Prosecutor General's Reports for 2016, 2015, 2013, 2012, 2011). Perhaps the difference could be explained either by the different data collected or by the fact that the data collected by the Prosecutor's Office are incomplete. The judicial statistics collected by the AAJC reflect all the prosecutors' requests to intercept the communications filed with all the courts. The Prosecutor General's Office may collect the data about the initial requests for authorization, but not about the requests for the extension of the interception. According to the Criminal Procedure Code, interception is allowed for a limited time and, respectively, in one criminal case there may be several requests to extend the interception, for each a separate court authorization being issued.

In any case, even 3,142 authorizations, the number with which the Prosecutor General's Office operates, is too high for the Republic of Moldova, as mentioned by the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Iordachi and others v. Moldova, in 2009. Moreover, this number is higher than the number of interceptions authorized in 2014 in the United Kingdom (2,700), a country with a population 21 times bigger than that of the Republic of Moldova and with an increased risk of terrorist incidents. The number of telephone interceptions in the Republic of Moldova is annually increasing, which is confirmed both by the statistical data used by the Prosecutor General's Office and by the AAJC.

Centrul de Resurse Juridice din Moldova (CRJM) a analizat activitatea Curții Europene a Drepturilor Omului (CtEDO) pentru anul 2017, pentru a stabili care este situația pe dosarele Republicii Moldova la CtEDO, inclusiv în comparație cu alte state membre ale Conveției Europene pentru Drepturile Omului.

În urma analizei Raportului de activitate al CtEDO pentru anul 2017, am constatat că în privința Republicii Moldova CtEDO a înregistrat cu 9% mai puține cereri decât în anul 2016, însă raportat la populaţia ţării numărul cererilor depuse la CtEDO împotriva Moldovei este foarte mare. În 2017, moldovenii s-au adresat la CtEDO de 3 ori mai des decât media europeană.

Experții CRJM consideră că descreșterea numărului de cereri depuse la CtEDO este determinată, în principal, de descreşterea popularităţii CtEDO, după ce în anii 2011-2016 CtEDO a respins fără o motivare explicită peste 8,600 de cereri moldovenești. Aceasta a avut un efect descurajant asupra avocaţilor.

La data de 31 decembrie 2017, 1,348 de cereri moldoveneşti încă aşteptau să fie examinate și 89% dintre acestea au şanse mari de succes. Acest număr este mai mare decât numărul total de cereri în bază cărora Moldova a fost condamnată în ultimii 20 de ani.

Din anul 1997 până la 31 decembrie 2017, CtEDO a pronunţat 354 de hotărâri în cauzele moldoveneşti, dintre care 16 - în anul 2017. La acest capitol, Moldova devansează cu mult Germania, Spania sau Olanda, ţări care au aderat la Convenţia Europeană pentru Drepturile Omului (CEDO) cu mult timp înaintea Moldovei şi au o populaţie cu mult mai mare decât cea a Moldovei. Cele mai frecvente tipuri de violări constatate de CtEDO în cauzele moldoveneşti sunt neexecutarea hotărârilor judecătoreşti (hotărâri vechi); maltraterea, anchetarea inadecvată a maltratărilor şi deceselor; detenţia în condiţii proaste; casarea neregulamentară a hotărârilor judecătoreşti irevocabile.

În baza tuturor hotărârilor şi deciziilor pronunţate până la 31 decembrie 2017, Republica Moldova a fost obligată să plătească peste EUR 16,300,000 (în 2017 - EUR 107,348). Aceasta este mai mult decât întregul buget instanţelor judecătoreşti pentru anul 2015.

Înregistrarea video a evenimentului este disponibilă mai jos:

Nota integrală privind Republica Moldova la Curtea Europeană a Drepturilor Omului în anul 2017 disponibilă aici (în limba engleză și în limba rusă).

Anterior, CRJM a efectuat analize similare pentru anii 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 și 2016.

Analiza dată a fost elaborată de CRJM în cadrul proiectului „Promovarea supremației legii prin monitorizare de către societatea civilă”, implementat de CRJM cu suportul Agenției SUA pentru Dezvoltare Internațională (USAID).

On 31 October 2017, the Ministry of Justice has submitted for coordination a draft law the declared aim of which is the improvement of the investment climate, attraction of foreign investment and reduction of pressure on business environment by the law enforcement bodies. The signatory organizations did not know about the elaboration of this draft law until 31 October 2017.

Numerous initiatives that cannot have anything in common with the declared aim of the draft are among the proposed amendments. On the contrary, they are unjustified and undermine the fight against corruption and the investigation of previously committed economic frauds. These include a new ground for exempting from criminal liability, a new ground for suspending the enforcement of imprisonment, prohibition to arrest persons for crimes sanctioned with less than 5 years of imprisonment, widening of the powers of the Anti-corruption Prosecutor's Office and increasing the number of criminal cases transferred into the exclusive competence of prosecutors. The powers of enforcement bodies that concern sanctioning are also substantially changed.

The draft stipulates that the person is released from criminal responsibility for committing economic crimes only once, if s/he recovers the damage and pays a fine to the state. In similar situations, the judge is required to apply the suspension of imprisonment for many economic crimes. Among the offences when these provisions can be applicable are the illegal practice of entrepreneurial activity, tax evasion, manipulation and abuse with securities, violation of shareholders' rights or unauthorized access to telecommunications networks. In the initial version, the draft provided that these provisions also apply to illegal crediting, fraudulent bank administration or obstruction of supervision in the banking system. However, even with subsequent changes, the remaining amendments can have a number of negative consequences for the financial and banking environment, reforms initiated in the sector or even for the intention of potential strategic investors to come to our country. The de facto decriminalization of crimes related to securities, especially those relating to the keeping of the stock holders' registers, will further reduce the ability of the state to guarantee private ownership and the investors' rights, which is the main element of a safe investment climate. It is unacceptable that the numerous raider attacks of the recent years and the embezzlement of property in a fraudulent way as well as intermediaries are exempted from criminal liability.

De facto, the draft prohibits the arrest of persons accused of economic crimes. Investments cannot be attracted by providing facilities to crooks. On the contrary, it will also be a sign of discouragement to business people of good faith. Moreover, a state that has been the victim of a huge bank fraud and numerous raider attacks should, on the contrary, should tighten sanctions for such deviations in order to discourage any new attempts of this kind. Introducing these amendments at the moment could seriously hamper the work of the competent authorities as regards the investigation of the banking fraud and proper accountability of those guilty of the fraud.

At the same time, we have been struck by the fact that although the draft states as its purpose the facilitation of the business environment, it changes the powers of the bodies responsible for investigating the cases of corruption. Contrary to international recommendations, small corruption, which is now investigated by the NAC, is transferred into the exclusive competence of anti-corruption prosecutors. This will distract them from cases of high level corruption and will further increase the workload of anti-corruption prosecutors, impeding the fight with the high level corruption. The draft does not justify this amendment in any way. Moreover, this amendment is contrary to the basic concept of the legislative reform of the Prosecutor's Office voted in 2016. This change was not discussed with prosecutors beforehand. The Prosecutor General Office and civil society organizations have earlier requested the Ministry of Justice not to promote it, but unsuccessfully.

Previously, civil society organizations have asked the Ministry of Justice to remove the above issues and even have made a public position note. The National Anti-corruption Centre as well provided a negative opinion on the draft (NAC corruption expertise opinion of 1 December 2017). The absence of justification, alongside with the insistence with which the draft is promoted, suggests that the draft law pursues a different purpose than the declared one.

The signatory organizations strongly request the Ministry of Justice and the Government to:

1. Withdraw the draft law regarding the „decriminalization of economic crimes“;
2. Set up a representative working group with the involvement of all stakeholders, including civil society, development partners and the business community with the view to develop legislative solutions to the real problems faced by the business community;
3. We also call on the development partners of the Republic of Moldova to follow closely the initiative regarding the "decriminalization of economic crimes".

The signatory organizations:

• Association for Participatory Democracy (ADEPT)
• Association for Efficient and Responsible Governance (AGER) Association of Independent Press (API)
• „Acces-info” Centre
• Independent Analytical Center „Expert-Grup” Centre for Analysis and Prevention of Corruption (CAPC) GENDERDOC-M Information Centre
• Journalistic Investigation Centre (CIJ)
• Legal Resources Centre from Moldova (CRJM) Center Partnership for Development (CPD) WatchDog.MD Community
• CPR Moldova
• Centre for Independent Journalism (CJI) Institute for Public Policy (IPP)
• Institute for Development and Social Initiatives „Viitorul” (IDIS „Viitorul”) Institute for European Policies and Reforms (IPRE)
• Promo-LEX
• Transparency International-Moldova

The entire text of the appeal is available here in English. 

The entire text of the appeal is available here in Romanian.