Moldova's Vetting Commission finishes 50 evaluations; most frequent reason for non-passage of evaluation unjustified discrepancy between judges' incomes and expenses

Chisinau, 20 November /MOLDPRES/ - The Vetting Commission (Commission for evaluation of judges) has finished 50 evaluations within the process of verification of the integrity of judges in office, as well as of professionals in the law sector, who run for the position of judge or member of the bodies of self-management of judges.  

According to the Commission, the results of the evaluations show that the doubts related to the financial integrity prompted, to a great extent, the non-passage of the evaluation. The most frequent reason for the non-passage represents the unjustified discrepancy between the incomes and expenses and the lifestyle which does not comply with the incomes.  

Out of those 50 evaluations finished so far, the Commission has adopted decisions on 26 of the cases and in the rest of 24 cases, it approved evaluation reports, thereby suggesting that the Superior Council of Magistracy (CSM) promotes or not promotes the subjects. The Vetting Commission adopts decisions in the cases when it exercises powers of pre-vetting and reports, when it acts based on the vetting competences.  

The evaluation reports contain the preliminary conclusions of the evaluation process and are submitted to CSM for consideration and adoption of a decision. The Commission’s decisions produce legal effects following their adoption by the Commission. After the adoption of a decision, the subject stays in contest, if he/she passes it or is excluded, if he/she does not pass the evaluation. Both categories of documents adopted by the Commission on the subjects evaluated show the same integrity problems.    

The evaluations finished highlighted that the principal doubts which led to the non-passage of the evaluation are of financial character, unlike the doubts of ethic integrity, which were less frequent. In many cases, they found out significant discrepancies between the wealth declared, the spending and incomes of the subjects. In most cases, the differences exceeded the quantum allowed by the law and the subjects who were not able to justify the source of some incomes did not pass the evaluation.   

As for the ethic integrity, some evaluations emphasized infringements of norms of ethics and the professional behavior, including conflicts of interests incompatible with the office of judge. These aspects triggered significant concerns about the ethic integrity of the people evaluated.  

The Vetting Commission does not evaluate the professional skills of the judges and candidates and does not give opinion on the rulings issued by them. Nevertheless, the Commission analyzed whether the subjects has an arbitrary behavior or issued arbitrary acts, contrary to the law and the European Court of Human Rights found out that such acts violate the fundamental rights.    

Those 50 evaluations finished so far do not include the evaluation of 11 subjects who withdrew or were withdrawn from the contest by CSM, at different stages of the process. Some of them withdrew or were withdrawn at the initial phase of the evaluation, while the others – closely to the finishing of the verification process.