The Buiucani District Court rejected the request to review the 2016 prison sentence against the former prime minister Vlad Filat, IPN reports.
Victor Munteanu, Filat’s lawyer, told reporters after the court sitting that the decision was unsurprising, given that the request was examined by the very same panel of judges that convicted the former politician in 2016.
Munteanu added that this amounted to unfair trial and that his attempts to get another group of judges to hear the case had been ignored. The decision will now be appealed in an appellate court on these and other grounds.
Vlad Filat was arrested in October 2015 on bribe-taking and influence peddling charges, for which he was eventually sentenced in June 2016 to nine years in prison. Filat is now also tired in a separate case involving money laundering charges, where he also pleads not guilty.
