Oligarch’s Conviction Shows Moldova’s Justice Reform is Delivering

The conviction of the powerful former tycoon Vladimir Plahotniuc is proof that Moldova’s judicial reform is providing results. The next test is making sure the system doesn’t drift back.

By Iulian Groza, Chisinau

For more than a decade, Vladimir Plahotniuc was Moldova’s dominant oligarch. The European Union, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom all imposed sanctions on him for corruption and for undermining democratic institutions and the rule of law in Moldova.

Many international observers, including the Council of Europe and the European Parliament, have described state capture, marked by significant influence over public institutions, including the justice system.

Plahotniuc fled the country in mid-2019 amid criminal investigations. He was detained at a Greek airport in 2025 under a false identity, then brought back to Moldova. After more than six months of hearings on one of five criminal cases against him, a court sentenced Plahotniuc to 19 years in prison.

The bench was a specialised anti-corruption panel of judges who have either passed integrity vetting or are still going through it.

The conviction relates to running a criminal organisation, money laundering and the so-called “$1 billion bank fraud”, a grand theft that wiped out roughly one-eighth of Moldova’s GDP at the time. The ruling runs to over 600 pages. The verdict is not final and may be appealed.

Credit is due to the judges and prosecutors who handled this case. Handling a high-profile prosecution of this nature is not easy in a country still consolidating the rule of law. They deserve recognition for working under the scrutiny and pressure that come with such cases.

Many were uncertain how the ruling would go until the last moment. The same uncertainty remains for the appeal. Plahotniuc is challenging the ruling before Moldova’s Court of Appeal; he denies the charges and claims they are politically motivated.

Captured system is being reset

The court that convicted Plahotniuc operates within a justice system that has been substantially reformed over the past years. Vetting sits at the core of this reform.

Vetting is a complex transitional-justice measure. External verification of judges and prosecutorsexamines their integrity, the verifiable origin of their wealth and any vulnerability to undue influence. The aim is to make sure those who deliver justice are independent, honest, and able to do their work with courage, efficiency and in safety.

It may not be a perfect instrument, but has proved to be necessary to reset a system that has been described for years as compromised.

Crucially, vetting in Moldova is not a domestic experiment. It is implemented with direct support from the European Union, designed in consultation with Venice Commission recommendations and implemented by evaluation commissions that include international members proposed by Moldova’s development partners.

The reform is not finished. It must be carried out until every key position in the judiciary and prosecution is held by an official who has passed the vetting process. Anything less, and the system risks drifting back. The EU accession process provides additional guarantees, now that Moldova has a real chance to succeed after many years.

Society’s support is crucial. Public trust and the safety of those who deliver justice depend on it. Reform that the public does not believe in does not survive politically. 

In a poll conducted by the Institute for European Policies and Reforms, IPRE, earlier this year, 49 per cent of respondents said the justice sector had improved over the past three years, up from 32 per cent in 2023. Forty-nine percent is not a triumph. But in a country where scepticism about the courts has been the default for a generation, it is movement.

Compared with the system of a decade ago, the difference is becoming visible. But it is too early to claim victory against impunity or the legacy of state capture.

Plahotniuc is not the only case. In 2023, another fugitive oligarch, Ilan Shor, was sentenced in absentia by the Court of Appeal to 15 years for his role in the same $1 billion bank fraud scheme. He has since been sanctioned by the EU, the US, Canada and the UK for interference in Moldovan politics on behalf of Russian interests.

That is the difference with the verdict with Plahotniuc; he is not just convicted on paper but is in detention. The symbolic weight matters.

But former oligarchs, kleptocrats and their affiliates, irrespective of whether they’re sitting in London, in prison in Chisinau awaiting a final verdict, or operating from Russia, will continue to try to shape outcomes in Moldova through dirty money, via their remaining loyalists inside the country, and by exerting other forms of pressure.

State institutions show signs of normalisation but are not yet fully insulated. Islands of resilience are forming but are not yet contiguous. Moldova needs to keep addressing internal vulnerabilities and strengthen its institutional and societal resilience.

Appeal verdict should prove vetting works

Moldova’s accession to the European Union is not a reward for good behaviour. It is the strongest lever to ensure this reform cannot be quietly unwound the next time the political weather changes. Justice reform and the fight against corruption are central to Moldova’s commitments under the Fundamentals Cluster and progress is assessed annually by the European Commission in its Enlargement Package country report.

Moldova’s Court of Appeal is expected to take up the Plahotniuc case within weeks. This is where the real test of judicial reform now sits, not in the conviction itself, but in whether the higher court can hold the line under the inevitable counter-pressure.

If it holds, Moldova will have proof that vetting works and that the justice system can now operate independently of the influence that once defined it.

That is the difference worth fighting for and the difference that the European Union and Moldova’s own citizens should keep insisting on, all the way to accession and beyond.

Iulian Groza is Executive Director of the Institute for European Policies and Reforms (IPRE), an independent European think tank based in Chisinau, and former Deputy Foreign Minister of Moldova (2013–15). 

This opinion was first published on BalkanInsight.com as part of a media partnership with BIRN and was produced within the project “Ensuring the integrity, efficiency, and independence of the justice system in Moldova – #Justice4Moldova,” funded by the European Union and co-funded by Soros Foundation Moldova. The content of the opinion belongs to the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union, Soros Foundation Moldova, or BIRN.