A former employee of the Ministry of Agriculture Was Sanctioned for Violation of the Law on Access to Information

Officials responsible for providing information requested by journalists and citizens can be fined by the police if they refuse to provide such information or ignore those requests. Thus, the Buiucani District Police Inspectorate (Chisinau) has recently sanctioned a former official from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry (after reorganization – Ministry of Agriculture, Regional Development and Environment) for failure to respond to the Independent Journalism Center (IJC) requests to provide statistics held by the Ministry.

At the end of May 2017, the Independent Journalism Center addressed an information request to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry, asking how many requests for access to official information it received from media outlets and media associations in 2016 and in the first five months of 2017 and, respectively, how many such requests were submitted by citizens. Since ministry officials did not respond, the IJC filed a complaint with the police, asking for administrative penalties to the people responsible for provision of the requested information, in accordance with article 71 of the Contraventions Code of the Republic of Moldova.

Recently, the Buiucani District Police Inspectorate from Chisinau informed the IJC in a letter that is had examined the case and made a report on an employee, Radu Olaru, who “omitted the examination of your application accidentally, due to heavy workload.”

Please note that, according to the official website of the former ministry, the person mentioned by the Buiucani District Police Inspectorate held the position of senior consultant in the Service for Information and Communication with the Media. Contacted by the Media Azi portal, Victoria Baltag, consultant in the anteroom of the current minister, informed us that after the reorganization of the institution Radu Olaru is no longer a ministry employee.

We shall remind that article 71 of the Contraventions Code provides that intentional violation of legal provisions on access to information or on petitioning is sanctioned by a fine of 9 to 15 conventional units to an individual and a fine of 18 to 30 conventional units to a responsible official. Also, according to the Contraventions Code, the general limitation period of liability for a contravention is 12 months.