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According to the sentence, Ungureanu was found guilty of offering Dan Chirita, former Deputy Head of the Information Technologies Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, ‘services of not publishing on Deschide.md news website defamatory data about the latter’ in the exchange of obtaining from him compromising information about some Moldovan artists.
In its decision of 5 October 2018, Chisinau District Court took also into account the term of imprisonment and the period when the journalist was detained, i.e. from 20 until 23 June 2014.
The journalist was outraged by the Court’s decision. Vadim Ungureanu declared for Media-azi.md that he found the letter telling him about the decision the Court of first instance only on 26 October 2018, at his door, having only 15 days to contest it before the Court of Appeal. ‘I found the letter on 26 October, under the door’, Ungureanu claims.
However, he managed to file the appeal at the beginning of this week, through Chisinau District Court, and waits for the higher Court to start the trial.
The journalist criticises the evidence provided by the prosecution, insisting that this case was developed by some representatives of law enforcement bodies to find out his sources of information.
The information that the journalist had in his computer and mobile phone – that were searched – also served as evidence.
Vadim Ungureanu was detained on 20 June 2014, during a meeting with Dan Chirita. The journalist was accused of blackmailing Chirita and thus obtaining personal data of Moldovan artists and state secrets. He was detained for three days in penitentiary No 13, where he was subject to pressure from the detainees to disclose the sources of the editorial office.
As regards the detention of the journalist in the penitentiary, there is another case opened, where Vadim Ungureanu is the injured party. Several employees of the Department of Penitentiary Institutions are involved in this case. During the criminal prosecution, prosecutors found that the journalist, although he had to be placed in a separate cell, was detained together with five persons convicted of committing extremely serious crimes. Prosecutors consider that the employees of the penitentiary infringed his rights and allowed mental pressure.
