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After the case was investigated by prosecutors, who did not find any signs of crime committed by the journalist, and examined by the court of first instance, which rejected the applicants’ claims as unfounded, the Criminal College of Chisinau Court of Appeal decided to quash the ruling of the court of first instance and declared the prosecutors’ ordinances null and void.
The Court also decided to send the case materials to the Prosecutor’s Office in order to remove the violations of petitioners’ rights and examine the complaint, and take a decision on the basis of the circumstances established as a result of the ‘proceedings carried out during the criminal prosecution’.
When asked by Media-azi.md to comment on the case, Nata Scobioala confirmed that she wrote the article jointly with investigative journalists from Romania. She admitted that she made an error not to ask for Valeriu Plesca’s take when she wrote the article. However, she claimed that all the information had been gathered from other publications.
Nata Scobioala added that Valeriu Plesca called her after the publication of the article and warned her that he would file a complaint with the court, which he actually did. Moreover, he sent to the editorial office a request to publish his right to reply, explaining the fate of those loans.
In a couple of days, the ex-official’s reply was added to that article.
However, representatives of the company and Valeriu Plesca went further and filed a summons with the court against Nata Scobioala and the Romanian Center for Investigative Journalism asking to declare the disseminated information as defamatory. This represents another case, i.e. a civil case in which the journalist is involved.
The lawyer of Nata Scobiala – Vasile Ciuperca – believes that the judgment of the magistrates from the Court of Appeal does not include certain acts or express circumstances as to what and how one could do in this situation. He believes that this judgement is biased, since it doesn’t clearly state what the investigating judge or the prosecutor has infringed.
Ciuperca explained that following the judgement, the criminal investigation body must take some additional actions, as deemed necessary by it, and take a decision in this respect. The lawyer claims that if they don’t agree with the prosecutors’ decision, they will challenge it in the court.
The Criminal College the Court of Appeal ruled the judgment on 12 September 2018.
The cases against Nata Scobioala, a civic activist and journalist, were initiated after the beginning of April 2017, when she wrote an investigation jointly with the Romanian Center for Investigative Journalism entitled ‘Politicieni și afaceriști controversați se bat pe banii românești din grădinițele moldovenești’ [‘Controversial politicians and businessmen fight for Romanian money from Moldovan kindergartens’].
The article also mentioned the ‘Green Farm’ company, then managed by the former Minister of Defense Valeriu Plesca, currently a businessman. The article stated about the former that he would have taken loans from banks, some of which were later liquidated.
After the article was published, Valeriu Plesca and the representative of the company he managed submitted a notice to Center Police Inspectorate in Chisinau requesting to check whether the company’s management actions or inactions involved any crime components. Valeriu Plesca also requested that Nata Scobioala be held accountable for ‘deliberately spreading unverified false information and accusations of committing a crime’.
When asked by Media Azi to explain his claims, Valeriu Plesca said that he did not intend to criminally punish the author, but merely to elucidate the facts described in the article. ‘Nobody is looking to send the alleged journalist Nata Scobioala to jail. Nobody has this goal. She referred to the fact that someone collapsed a bank, and we are also among those targeted by her article. Let the law enforcement bodies figure out who crashed the bank. Personally, I didn’t meet with Nata Scobioala, and I don’t care about her’, Plesca said.
Lawyer Tatiana Puiu, representative of Freedom House in Moldova, believes that no criminal case could be initiated in this situation due to the lack of a criminal component, and the fact that the Criminal Code no longer provides for criminal liability for calumny. ‘Furthermore, even if there was an offence component, a year has passed since then and Nata cannot be held liable since the limitation period has expired’, Tatiana Puiu explained for Anticorupţie.md portal.
