The last hearing in the case of conviction of the ex-president of the Administration Board of Banca de Economii Ilan Shor was held at the end of this January. Since then, the hearings set to take place at the Cahul Appeals Court didn’t take place. The examination of the appeal was suspended because the lawyers for Ilan Shor raised the exception of unconstitutionality of a sentence from the Penal Procedure Code and the Constitutional Court hasn’t yet pronounced on the issue.
In a response to an inquiry made by IPN, the Cahul Appeals Court said that in the hearing of January 27, the lawyers asked to replace the panel of judges. In the process of examining the request, the lawyers filed another application, by which they raised the exception of unconstitutionality of the sentence “there are other circumstances that generate reasonable doubts about the impartiality of the judge” from the Penal Procedure Code.
By the decision of January 27, the lawyers’ request to notify the Constitutional Court of the raised exception of unconstitutionality was accepted and the procedure for examining the request to replace the judges was suspended.
The CC hasn’t yet pronounced on this aspect and the request to replace the judges wasn’t dealt with. Therefore, hearings cannot be held.
After the resignation tendered by judge Nina Veleva, the rapporteur in the Shor case, was accepted, judge Tudor Berdilă was named rapporteur in her place.
A new hearing in the Shor case was set for March 1, but this was put off due to the absence of the CC’s judgment. However, on the court’s website it is said that the hearing wasn’t held because the rapporteur judge in this case was replaced.
The next hearings were scheduled for the second half of April. According to the Cahul Appeals Court, the hearings were set in order to “obey the reasonable timeframe for judging the case”.
In June 2017, Ilan Shor was sentenced to seven years and a half in jail for causing damage to the state by swindle and abuse of trust. At the start of last July, legal action was taken against the leader of the Shor Party for fleeing Moldova in breach of the ban imposed of him. In the middle of last August, Parliament decided to lift the parliamentary immunity. Ilan Shor, who was elected MP in single-member constituency No. 18 Orhei, attended only several sittings of Parliament when the current legislature was only formed.
