Lawyer Emilian Bandalac, who is the lawyer for businessman Veaceslav Platon, requested IPN News Agency to publish a denial to a news article produced recently based on the program “Interpol” of TV7 channel, within which the former head of the National Commission for Financial Markets Artur Gherman said that ‘the whole financial system of Moldova, including the banking and insurance sectors, is now controlled by Vlad Plahotniuc and Veaceslav Platon’.

IPN believes the given request is unfounded, but, given that such requests usually precede lawsuits and because such actions in relation to the media are rather often, the Agency considered it will be useful for everyone to perform a public exercise on this case. Thus, IPN published the text of the denial compiled by the lawyer, but asked simultaneously a mass media law expert to comment on this case and on such actions in general.
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“Denial to article “Artur Gherman: I think Filat is involved in theft of billion” that was published at the website www.ipn.md on 06.11.15

The administrator of the website www.ipn.md denies the information about Veaceslav Platon, presented in the article entitled “Artur Gherman: I think Filat is involved in theft of billion” that was published at the website www.ipn.md on 06.11.15.

We regret the fact that the information about Veaceslav Platon hasn’t been verified and lacks substantiation. Thus, the assertion that ‘the whole financial system of Moldova, including the banking and insurance sectors, is now controlled by Vlad Plahotniuc and Veaceslav Platon’ is fully unfounded.

Even if these are serious accusations, without substantiation, the assertions were published without being verified and documented.

We consider that the information about Veaceslav Platon, presented on the website www.ipn.md  in the article “Artur Gherman: I think Filat is involved in theft of billion” is groundless.
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We specify once again that the given denial was presented to IPN Agency by the lawyer of businessman Veaceslav Platon.

Tatiana Puiu, jurist at the Independent Journalism Center, considers the denial request should have been made to the source of information, not to IPN Agency, which took the information from the public area. “Only the court of law can oblige IPN Agency to publish a denial in this case and only when it is proven that these facts are incorrect. At this stage, the Agency cannot deny what another person declared, also because Artur Gherman can challenge the fact that the Agency denied his assertion,” stated the jurist.

Tatiana Puiu also said that in fact it is not a request to deny the defamatory statements about facts that are not true, but rather an attempt to oblige the media outlet (IPN) to express its regret and ‘to call on the representatives of the mass media to collect accurate facts and to verify the data used in informative products ”.

The jurist noted that Veaceslav Platon’s lawyer should define the circumstances showing that the defamatory information is in essence false or that it is not based on sufficient facts. Otherwise, the texts presented by the lawyer represent only his opinion.