In early December, the French court handed down erstwhile Moldovan Prime Minister Vlad Filat for 2 years in prison and a fine of EUR 100,000 for money laundering in connection with a corruption case.
According to the ruling, Filat was found guilty of laundering funds from a corruption crime committed against a abroad public officer. The case afraid buying in 2012 and 2014, together with his ex-wife, real property in France through intermediary companies and alleged substituted buyers.
Real property was purchased by a Canadian company which, in 2011, erstwhile Filat headed the Moldovan government, received a contract to run a national lottery in that country.
In its judgment, the court stated that Filat ‘was knowingly laundering proceeds from his own corruption, being the head of his country's government and having an work to act in the interest of the State’.
According to court sources, Vlad Filat filed an appeal against the sentence.
Filat was Prime Minister of Moldova from 2009 to 2013. In 2016, he was sentenced to 9 years in prison in Moldova for corruption and abuse of power. He was accused of misappropriating $260 million as part of the alleged banking scandal, in which about $1 billion disappeared from the country's financial system. He left prison early in 2019.
Source: AFP
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