A former police officer from Ungheni was sentenced to eight years in jail, fined 20,000 lei and banned from holding posts in the internal affairs bodies for a period of five years, IPN reports.

According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the policeman, who worked at the Ungheni Transport Police Commissariat, appropriated over 1.5 kg of marijuana seized from a household.

When he found out that a criminal case was started against him, he obtained another marijuana and put it in an annex of the institution, saying it was the missing part of the corpus delicti. But examinations showed that this vegetal mass was different from that confiscated earlier.

In September 2011, the Ungheni Court acquitted the culprit. The prosecutors appealed the decision, but their appeal was rejected by the Balti Appeals Court. In December 2012, the Supreme Court of Justice quashed the decision of the Balti Appeals Court and ordered retrying the case.

The new sentence can also be appealed to a higher court.