Two cars with a total value of about 1.2 million lei were seized this week in the criminal case "Interpol". Prosecutors say they are criminal assets, part of the bribe paid in the corruption scheme to block Interpol Red Notices.

The prosecutor's office also announces that, according to the evidence gathered so far, there is a reasonable suspicion that an organized criminal group set up a corruption scheme to enable persons subject to Interpol Red Notices to obtain asylum seeker status in the Republic of Moldova, with the aim of blocking and deleting these notices by paying bribes to public officials, IPN reports.

A total of over 11.7 million lei has been seized in this criminal case. The seized assets are currently under the management of the Criminal Assets Recovery Agency.

In June 2024, the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office carried out numerous searches on the territory of the Republic of Moldova, with the support of French officers and prosecutors and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. Dozens of people were interviewed, some of whom were detained and remanded in custody. Letters rogatory were also issued and information and evidence obtained from nine foreign jurisdictions.

The investigations established that a Moldovan lawyer and a former civil servant from the Republic of Moldova who also worked for Interpol, with the involvement of a company from the United Arab Emirates, were submitting requests to Interpol with falsified information and documents, requesting the blocking of Red Notices for their clients, claiming that they had asylum seeker status in the Republic of Moldova. At the same time, the lawyer applied for asylum at the General Inspectorate for Migration of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. On the instructions of the former head of the IGM, public officials from the IGM initiated the asylum procedure, contrary to the law, without the physical presence of the persons concerned on the territory of the Republic of Moldova. Subsequently, the former head of the International Police Cooperation Directorate of the MIA included manifestly false data in official documents, confirming the status of persons as "asylum seekers", on the basis of which Interpol blocked Red Notices.

At least 26 people submitted false documents to Interpol through this scheme, affecting criminal investigations around the world, including France, Australia, China and other countries. As a result of the investigation, on June 7 of this year, Interpol unblocked Red Notices on behalf of individuals who benefited from this corruption scheme, preventing international fugitives from avoiding arrest warrants.