Volkov announces hunger strike

Businessman Vladimir Volkov engaged in a hunger strike yesterday, July 18, protesting against his imprisonment. Volkov’s lawyer Dumitru Harea claims that the charges laid against his client were fabricated at someone’s orders. The lawyer appealed the decision to extend the arrest for 30 more days, Info-Prim Neo reports. Representatives of the NGO Moldova Mea took note of the case and told the press that it recalled the period of 1937, when those who needed to be shut up were exiled or incarcerated. “Look at what happened to Volkov. If he said something publicly, he got jailed. The same might happen to you. That’s the message”, said Moldova Mea leader Fiodor Ghelici. Ghelici thrashed the argument that Volkov was taken into custody in order to be protected, because there were other ways to do so. The Moldova Mea leader praised Vladimir Volkov, saying there were few who would have brought to the public the officials’ schemes of dilapidation of European funds. Fiodor Ghelici claims he received no answer to his petitions sent to the government, the Parliament and the President’s Office on Vladimir Volkov’s behalf. In these petitions, he spoke about the methods of money laundering applied on European funds and corruption at the national border. According to Volkov, the head of the Border Guards Service Roman Revenco (whose resignation was approved by the government on July 18 in relation to the institution’s reorganization) was involved in these schemes. Moldova Mea decided to organize the next press conferences in Romania, hoping for a better media impact that would force the authorities to take action. All of Volkov’s statements would be translated to English and sent to Moldova’s European partners. Ericsson Company’s office in Moldova issued an informative note addressed to Fiodor Ghelici, stating that Vladimir Volkov wasn’t and had not been an employee of Ericsson and demanded that the businessman wasn’t presented as the company’s representative. Igor Caldare, member of Moldova Mea, commented that the director of Ericsson Moldova had been threatened or bribed by those involved in the fraud schemes. At the end of June, Vladimir Volkov declared that large amounts of money had been dilapidated from a €10 million European grant. According to him, Roman Revenco obtained €130,000 through one of his companies. After these statements, Volkov was arrested and the press wrote that Roman Revenco was the nephew of Minister of Interior Alexei Roibu.