Lawyer Vitalie Taulean said the prosecutors, police officers and judges reap benefits when they detain and arrest persons illegally. According to him, the relatives of these people lost confidence in the justice system and resort to corrupting the representatives of the law enforcement bodies in order to see their close people free, and the money they give is accepted. The lawyer made the statements in a news conference at IPN.

Vitalie Taulean presented the case of his client Vladimir Caraman, who was arrested on May 2 on cigarette smuggling charges. He was arrested by the border police at a distance of 10 km of the place where a smuggling case was indeed identified. The police officers falsified the hour of the arrest, adding seven hours, while the decision to put him under arrest for 72 hours was taken when the 72 hours already expired.

Moreover, the anticorruption prosecutor who manages the case could not present the warrants for the arrest of Vladimir Caraman and documents showing that he was empowered to examine the smuggling case. There is no plausible evidence against Caraman. The policemen presented a pair of shoes that allegedly Caraman wore when he was transporting contraband cigarettes. The man asserts that the police gave him the shoes and told him to wear it.

Vitalie Taulean also said that the man never drove a vehicle and des not have a driver’s license, but he is accused of illegally transporting a consignment of contraband cigarettes by a car. Furthermore, the man’s mother told the lawyer that Vladimir Caraman on May 1 had a barbecue with his friends and drank a large quantity of alcohol. The lawyer considers that a drunken man without a diver’s license wouldn’t have decided to drive a car in which there was contraband.

All the proofs and arguments presented by the lawyer weren’t taken into account by the judge and Caraman was put under arrest. Vitalie Taulean said the man has intellectual problems and he was threatened and intimidated into renouncing the services of the lawyer employed on contract or he will be held in a cell together with people suffering from tuberculosis. After Vitalie Taulean refused to sign the indictment resented by the prosecutor, the latter found a state lawyer for Vladimir Caraman without informing him that he already has a lawyer.

Vitalie Taulean made an approach to the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO), asking that they investigate the case and hold accountable those who break the law, but he received no answer. He believes that the PGO has no interest to punish the corrupt prosecutors, police officers and judges. Effort is now made to hush up the illegalities committed by the police in the case of Vladimir Caraman.