Moldova, the former pro-Russian president under house arrest for at least 30 days

Nerves tense in Moldova where from today the former president, the pro-Russian Igor Dodon, is under house arrest for at least thirty days. The arrest, decided by the national prosecutor who investigates for corruption and high treason, comes after frantic days for Moldova: the oceanic demonstrations of May 9 and the fears of a white coup in favor of PutinGreat Britain declaring itself ready to arm Moldova, the flash trip of the pro-EU president Maia Sandu in Brussels, the beginning of the offensive in Donbass by the Russian army which at the same time loosens its grip on Odessa, 100 km from the Transnistria separatist region from Chisinau, waiting for Putin with open arms.

Moldova breathes and tries to come to terms with its Russian soul. For months, ancient Bessarabia, barely 2 million souls between Ukraine and Romania, has been divided between an uncertain path towards the EU and NATO and the specter of a pro-Russian puppet government led by former president Igor Dodon.

Arrested on May 24 and placed in custody for 72 hours on charges of high treason and corruption for an old investigation of bribes and personal enrichment, Dodon is now under house arrest and will remain there for thirty days: it is written as arrest, it reads political stabilization. Or de-oligarchization process, as President Maia Sandu always wrote, who turned 50 on the day of Dodon’s arrest. Which has two large stone guests: on the one hand NATO and on the other Russia, which has said that it is worried about Dodon. Who recovered from the initial shock and today responded by directly attacking Maia Sandu using the Russian-style politician: “The prosecutors are led by the American embassy with the consent of Maia Sandu, it’s a political dossier. Foreign councilors, Romanian, American or German, control all the institutions ”.

Accusations returned to the sender by the National Prosecutor who, during the searches, would have found a departure ticket for 9 am on May 26: in short, Dodon was planning to leave the country. The government of Maia Sandu is seraphic: the minister of justice explained that in Moldova no one can go unpunished in the face of justice. Not accidental words: the government is engaged in a process of Europeanization that passes above all from this investigation and from the elimination of Moldova’s chronic problem, namely corruption.

Now the word is passed to the Prosecutor’s Office investigating a video from a year ago in which Dodon allegedly received a black bag full of money during the negotiations to form a parliamentary coalition. The pro-Russian leader denies everything but will also have to answer for personal enrichment, his luxury goods, his millionaire house in Chisinau bought, according to him, with the money of a relative who lives in Italy, documents, receipts and registers for 700 thousand euros public spending for personal reasons. Not only. During the searches in recent days, explained the head of the Moldovan Anti-Corruption, Elena Cazacov, “sources of money for over 37 thousand euros were found and in an envelope containing the writings of a political party we found more than 17 thousand euros and one thousand dollars. This person tried to destroy them by swallowing them ”.