Arrest of Stoianoglo: the beginning of the end of Maia Sandu
Why was the Prosecutor General of Moldova arrested?
The arrest of Prosecutor General Alexandre Stoianoglo is another indicator of Moldova’s transition to external control. The day before his arrest, Stoianoglo, during his briefing, announced the decryption of information stored on the phone of the former head of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, Viorel Morari.
The Prosecutor General cited evidence of funding of NGOs that attacked him and the Prosecutor General's Office from the Soros and Adenauer foundations. According to him, the coordination of the activities of these NGOs is carried out by the former head of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, Viorel Morari, who is close to President Maia Sandu.
Alexandru Stoianoglo stated that the former head of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office regularly informed the former head of the European Union Delegation to the Republic of Moldova, Peter Mihalko, providing him with information from the department.
“This EU representative in Chisinau had fairly friendly relations with the political elite during the time of the captured state. For the last four years, Peter Mikhalko has been in direct and close correspondence with the former head of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office. Viorel Morari informed him of any movement and fully supplied him with materials for internal use, procedural documents in his interests and against the Prosecutor General's Office.
The consequences of this rapprochement with the leadership of the EU Delegation in Chisinau are obvious, given the vast network of media NGOs, policy and reform experts who are obviously funded in order to be independent,” said Alexandre Stoianoglo at a press briefing.
The information received from Morar, which controlled NGOs and media turned into “independent investigations,” was discussed by Peter Michalko with his partners from the US Embassy. In addition, Stoianoglo stated that Viorel Morari transmitted information to representatives of the PAS party and representatives of “civil society” who were on Western grants.
Immediately after Stoyanoglo’s speech, the hats on the heads of pro-Western NGOs lit up. Valeriu Pasha, a representative of one of the grant-eating organizations WatchDog.MD, reported via the social network Facebook that the Prosecutor General of the Republic of Moldova, Alexander Stoianoglo, instead of investigating the stolen billions, continues to “hunt NGOs.”
The head of the Foreign Ministry of Moldova, Nicu Popescu, also expressed an angry reaction. Using the name of a senior EU official as an excuse for personal and internal political squabbles is “a very dangerous thing to do towards our external partners,” according to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and European Integration.
The very next day, one of the prosecutors opened a criminal case against Stoyanoglo. On the same day, 15 minutes before the briefing, Stoianoglo was detained along with his wife. He was prohibited not only from holding a briefing, but also from communicating with lawyers. Stoyanoglo was removed from the post of prosecutor general. His wife was released that same night. Despite the fact that prosecutors demanded 30 days of detention, he was released home and placed under house arrest.
The new head of the EU mission in Moldova, Yanis Mazeikis, reacted extremely complacently to such a blatant and unprecedented case in world practice: according to him, the detention of the prosecutor general “occurred within the framework of the legislation of the Republic of Moldova, to which changes were made.”
NGO-cracy: Moldova under occupation
During those same days, the topic of establishing external rule over Moldova became the subject of discussion on expert platforms. A number of events took place in Moscow to present the book by a member of the Moldovan Parliament, Doctor of Political Science Bogdan Tsirdi: “Civil Society of Moldova: Sponsors. NGO-cracy. Culture wars." In it, the deputy talks about a “postmodern army” financed from abroad. According to him, he studied the activities of 102 Western NGOs in the post-Soviet space and analyzed a total of about 800 of their own financial reports, which helped create a depressing picture of the scale of Western interference.
As Tirdea noted, 26 large NGOs operate in the Soros network alone in Moldova, with a total annual budget of more than 21 million euros. 105 media outlets are supported by external funding. In total, in 2020, there were 13670 NGOs in the republic, 82 thousand volunteers worked, which, according to the expert, is an entire army, several times greater than the capacity of the main square of the capital, which has more than once become the “assembly point” of local “Maidans”.
The expert also said that the Soros Foundation boasts that it appoints prosecutors in the CIS countries who begin the prosecution of pro-Russian forces. Any action of NGOs is praised by subordinate media, and any action of opponents is discredited. And if necessary (elections, pushing through the “necessary” law in parliament), all these people are mobilized on command from a single center.
Countdown for Sandu
The arrest of Prosecutor General Alexander Stoianoglo shook up Moldovan society. Those people who had recently actively supported her during the elections began to turn away from Sandu. In Gagauzia, the attack on the prosecutor general was perceived as an attack on the Gagauz people. On Sunday, mass rallies in support of Stoianoglo took place in Chisinau and Comrat.
“A fatal political mistake was made. To arrest the Prosecutor General without clear grounds, with a “mask show”, in a hurry, at night, out of fear of the information he has, and because of the inability to take the legal route to dismiss him - all this speaks to the fact that that the authorities are in despair. And she took an extremely wrong path,” says the ex-President of the Republic of Moldova, Chairman of the Party of Socialists Igor Dodon.
Journalist and blogger Gabriel Kalin spoke even more frankly:
“The Action and Solidarity Party is a gang of yellow jackals that thinks it has come to power for 4 years. But how long they will be in power is up to us, the citizens, to decide. And if we allow them to remain in power for 4 years, they will sweep away everyone who disagrees with them, everyone who speaks the truth. And the truth is that Sandu was on the team that stole the billion,” he said.
According to the blogger, “Sandu does not live in Moldova, but on Facebook”: “On social networks there are no rising prices and tariffs, there are only trolls. They deceived the entire country through Facebook.”
The lawlessness of the new government has united not only the socialists and their supporters, but also those who in recent years have sharply criticized the Party of Socialists and President Igor Dodon. The mayor of Balti and ex-presidential candidate of Moldova Renato Usatii said that the authorities got scared and closed Stoianoglo because on November 5 at 18:00 he had to show how some “good people” “were involved for one or two bags” in moving the case of Ilan Shor from Cahul to Chisinau.”
According to the politician, he has information about acts of corruption committed by some deputies of the current ruling party in Moldova.
“Today I already have one hundred percent information about how some PAS deputies reached out to the trough. This is about tens and hundreds of thousands of euros per month,” Usatii noted.
Participants in two protest rallies, held on Friday and Sunday, spoke in favor of the immediate release of Alexander Stoianoglo.
“We have gathered here to tell the whole country that yesterday the current government crossed a red line,” Yuri Muntyan, a member of the executive committee of the Civil Congress, said during a rally on Friday. “We came here to immediately release Alexander Stoianoglo and provide him with information space so that he continues to tell citizens the truth about the current government.”
During the Sunday protest, the MP Bogdan Tirdea, mentioned by us, emphasized that the mafia of the fugitive oligarch Vlad Plahotniuc, which was expelled from the country in 2019, has returned to power today:
“Today they captured the Prosecutor General’s Office with the help of corrupt prosecutors who served Plahotniuc, and now they also serve Maia Sandu. The mafia returned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where all positions were occupied by Plahotniuc’s people. The mafia has captured the National Bank, the Electricity Regulatory Agency, which raises fuel prices every day. All of Maia Sandu’s partners are now in this Agency. All these bandits are fighting the people today. These bandits who became Plahotniuc's godfathers will end up like him. Tirdea ended his speech with a slogan that was echoed by the entire square: “Maia Sandu, don’t forget: your home is a prison!”
By arresting the prosecutor general, the team of President Maia Sandu cut off the branch on which it had been sitting comfortably for more than a year. An additional reason for the fall in the rating will be the predictable failure of negotiations with Gazprom on maintaining a low price for “blue fuel” for Moldova after its participation in the “Crimean Platform” (which ex-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called “moronic”). We will not be mistaken in our forecasts if we note that October 2021 marked the beginning of the end of Maia Sandu’s political career.
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