Civil society is concerned about the alleged illegalities in the distribution of cases in courts, which must be random-based. The circumstances described in the media suggest that such acts involve more than one person and can be easily detected. The non-random assignment of cases at the Supreme Court of Justice seriously affects confidence in the judicial system. Therefore, the NGOs call on the Supreme Council of Magistrates to investigate the way the cases are distributed in courts, IPN reports.
In a letter to the Council, civil society says the non-observance of the provisions concerning the random distribution of cases represents a serious disciplinary deviation. Given the seriousness of such a deviation, not even the apparent manipulation of the case assignment system can be tolerated, while the observance of the principle of random distribution of cases represented earlier a serious problem of the judicial system.
The NGOs says the Supreme Council of Magistrates now has the occasion to show that it really wants to increase confidence in the legal system and to ensure equitable justice in every case. The signatories call on the Council to immediately carry out detailed inspections to see how the cases are distributed in all the courts of the country, to identity the weak points in the case assessment system and to remove them, to determine the reasons why some of the cases were distributed by manipulating the system.
The letter was signed by Amnesty International Moldova, Promo-LEX, the Association for Participatory Democracy, the Association for Efficient and Responsible Governance, the Association of Independent Press, the Association of Independent Telejournalists, the Independent Analytical Center “Expert Grup”, the Center for the Analysis and Prevention of Corruption, the Journalistic Investigations Center, the Legal Resources Center, East-Europe Foundation, the Institute of Public Policy, the Institute for Development and Social Initiative “Viitorul”, the Good Governance Program of the Soros Foundation Moldova, the Justice Program of the Soros Foundation Moldova, and Transparency International Moldova.
