President Maia Sandu has partially won the lawsuit concerning the protection of honor, dignity, and professional reputation filed against Anna Mihalachi. The ruling was delivered on February 12 by the Chisinau Court, Centru office, agora.md reports.
The court partially upheld the claim and ordered Anna Mihalachi to issue a public apology and retract information previously published on Facebook regarding the president’s grandfather, Mihail Sandu.
According to the decision, Mihalachi must publish the following message on her personal page:
“I, Anna Mihalachi, hereby offer my public apologies to Maia Sandu for the defamatory statements published by me on October 14, 2024, on my personal Facebook page, statements that affected the memory of her grandfather, Mr. Mihail Sandu. I publicly retract the information I disseminated, according to which Mr. Mihail Sandu was allegedly a traitor, involved in the deportations of Moldovans to Siberia, set fire to the village church, or destroyed religious objects, as being false and defamatory.”
The court also ordered Mihalachi to pay 450 lei in court costs. The remainder of the claim was dismissed as unfounded. The ruling may be appealed to the Centru Court of Appeal within 30 days of its pronouncement.
According to the cited source, neither Maia Sandu nor Anna Mihalachi attended the court hearing.
The lawsuit was filed after a post published in October 2024, and later deleted, alleged that Mihail Sandu had been involved in deportations and had desecrated the village church. Maia Sandu requested in court the retraction of the information, a public apology, and compensation for moral damages amounting to 50,000 lei.