Valeriu Pasat asks Prosecutor General's Office to send two cases opened against him to court

The former minister of defense and director of the Security and Information Service Valeriu Pasat addressed an open letter to the new Prosecutor General of Moldova Valeriu Zubko, demanding that the two cases started against him while he was in custody be sent to court, Info-Prim Neo reports. “The judiciary was indeed subdued by the political regime, while the Prosecutor's Office was transformed into an instrument for settling accounts with the opponents of the power and fabricated cases by order (...) I suffered the consequences of this fraudulent practice as they opened four 'legal cases' against me one after another since 2005,” the letter says. Pasat stressed that two of the cases, in which he is accused of harming the interests of the state by selling warplanes and rockets, had been examined two times, including at the Supreme Court of Justice, and every time sent back. In July 2009, the Chisinau Court of Appeals examined them for the third time and confirmed again that the former minister was not guilty. “You can imagine Mister Prosecutor General in what appealing condition the institution that you took over fell during these years if your predecessor (Valeriu Gurbulea – e.n.), before tendering his resignation, ordered that the two 'cases' be sent again to the Supreme Court of Justice, despite the Court of Appeals' decision. I hope the court, by its decision, will bring this ill-famed story that dishonored our country to an end,” Valeriu Pasat said. The former minister asks the Prosecutor's Office to decide the fate of the other two cases opened while he was in detention in 2006. “In one of them, I am accused of smuggling armament. When searching my house, they confiscated a pistol (officially registered at the Ministry of the Interior of Moldova) that I received from the former minister of defense of Romania as a gift. In the other case, I am accused of attempted coup at the instructions of the Kremlin,” Pasat says in the letter. “Though these two 'cases' as the first two were undoubtedly fabricated by order, I do not want favors and do not ask that you close them. I only ask that these two 'cases' be at last sent to court, after three years of 'investigation',” the minister said. Valeriu Pasat was arrested on March 11, 2005 and sentenced later to 10 years' imprisonment on one of the counts. He had been in detention for about two years and was then amnestied. He is now in Moscow, protected by the Russian authorities. Pasat said the Moldovan authorities refuse to issue him with a new passport instead of the old one that expired in December 2008. Thus, he cannot travel to other countries on business and cannot return home to see his parents. Asked to comment on this issue, Prosecutor General Valeriu Zubko said they are considering inviting Valeriu Pasat to Moldova, adding that he will be probably issued with identification papers so that he could be questioned in these cases.