After former Moldovan ambassador to India Ana Taban accused the leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Moldova of allegedly trying to fabricate a criminal case against her and announced that she would sue the institution, while the ministry confirmed receiving the lawsuit request, Mihai Popșoi presented his position on the scandal during an interview on the national public radio broadcaster.
The minister stated that authorities dismissed the former diplomat after an audit identified financial irregularities and after she allegedly submitted a leave request without waiting for approval. According to Popșoi, the ministry classified her absence from work as unjustified.
Popșoi said that Taban has the right to challenge the matter in court. He added that the ministry can provide all necessary evidence to demonstrate that officials followed legal procedures.
“Following the audit mission, serious financial irregularities were identified which, under the law, had to be forwarded to the competent institutions — the National Anticorruption Center of Moldova and the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office of Moldova. Otherwise, I risked being accused of covering up the case and could myself have faced liability, including criminal liability. Once the information was transferred to law enforcement institutions, they considered there were sufficient grounds to open a criminal case concerning the loss of those funds. And when there is a criminal case regarding the loss of funds from a diplomatic institution, the image and trust in the head of that institution inevitably suffer, which in diplomacy is an extremely sensitive matter. That served as more than sufficient grounds for her recall from office,” Popșoi said on Moldova 1.
The minister also commented on the leave request issue.
“You and anyone else working in the public or private sector know that a request for leave or any absence from work must be approved. But when you send the request and leave immediately, without making sure it was even received — not to mention signed — that becomes a problem. As I said, the request reached me one or two days later. Once we established the unjustified absence from work, naturally, that served as more than sufficient grounds for dismissal,” he added.
The ministry later published the video segment featuring the minister on its official page, while the institution’s press service informed journalists that the statements represented the ministry’s official position regarding Ana Taban’s accusations.
Shortly afterward, Ana Taban released a video accusing the minister of lying. She claimed that authorities conducted the audit after her dismissal and that officials falsified the audit report.
“That is false. I was recalled from office on August 6, while the audit mission took place between September 8 and 12. Only afterward did the audit report appear, and of course it was falsified. As proof, the response from the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office confirms that I am not involved in any criminal case. I would ask journalists to ask Deputy Prime Minister Popșoi why, during the summer of 2024, he assigned an officer from the Security and Intelligence Service of Moldova to a diplomatic position responsible for consular services at the recently opened embassy in New Delhi,” the former ambassador said.
Authorities recalled Ana Taban from India in August 2025 after she served nearly two years at the diplomatic mission opened in 2023.