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In the process of criminal assets recovery, the Criminal Assets Recovery Agency (CARA) cooperates with several institutions, among which is the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office. For example, the two institutions work together in the case of bank fraud, whose value of seized assets amounts to six billion MDL. In an exclusive interview, Pavel Calpajiu, the Head of the Directorate for Evaluation, Management and Disposal of Criminal Assets within CARA, and the Anti-corruption Prosecutor Octavian Iachimovschi have provided more details about the activity they carry out.
The Criminal Assets Recovery Agency (CARA) can carry out investigations only at the request of the criminal investigation bodies. The Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office is one of the main criminal prosecution bodies, which sends delegations to ARBI to conduct parallel financial investigations. In the case of bank fraud, these 2 institutions work together in the process of identifying assets, seizing and managing them.
“The entire bank fraud has been carried out over several years. The total damage amounts to over 13 billion MDL. We managed to apply seizures on about 48% of the identified damage, which would be about 6.4 billion MDL. Here, we take into account the assets, both on criminal cases that are judged in court, on records on which the court previously issued its decision, as well as on the assets that we have identified during the criminal investigation and on which seizure is applied during the criminal investigation stage”, stated Octavian Iachimovschi.
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The collaboration between the two institutions does not end at this stage. The Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office continues to provide information that contributes to faster identification of illegally obtained assets.
“In the case of bank fraud, currently we have the Court’s irrevocable decision regarding a former public official, from whose account several million MDL have been collected to the state budget. Also, there are several pending cases, the total value of the assets seized here being about one billion MDL. We are waiting for the confiscation decisions of the Court, based on which we will proceed to the sale of the confiscated goods and, subsequently, to the collection of money to the state budget”, said Pavel Calpajiu.
In order to carry out parallel financial investigations and identify criminal assets, CARA uses several sources of information, both the information accumulated in special investigations and databases, as well as journalistic investigations or social networks.
The Criminal Assets Recovery Agency is a specialized autonomous subdivision within the National Anticorruption Center. CARA was founded in 2017, aiming at carrying out parallel financial investigations, as well as at seizing criminal assets. In the five years of activity, CARA has managed to identify and seize, in the country and abroad, assets worth more than 6 billion MDL.
This material was made with the support of the Soros Foundation Moldova, in partnership with the Criminal Assets Recovery Agency, an autonomous subdivision within NAC. The foundation does not influence the editorial policy of the Realitatea Press Group.