Ambassador of United Kingdom to Moldova makes specifications on decision of confiscating money from Luca Filat

Chisinau, 11 February /MOLDPRES/ - Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Moldova Steven Fisher has made specifications on the decision of confiscating money from Luca Filat, the son of the former PM of Moldova, Vlad Filat.  

In an interview given with the MOLDPRES Agency, the official said that the action had taken place through the enforcement of the unexplained wealth law.  ''This law consists in the fact that, when there is an unexplained wealth, the authorities of the Great Britain analyze these assets/money and report to the financial institutions from the UK. The concerned person was spending money of unknown origin in a quite suspicious way. Thus, the authorities admitted the unexplained wealth order and confiscated the sum of money. Subsequently, things got to the Law Court and a decision on returning this money to Moldova was to be issued or not, as the authority has right to retain the resources or to return them. Moldova gave guarantees that this money would be spent correctly, without being stolen again; therefore, the judges ruled to return the money to the country,’’ Steven Fisher said.

The ambassador stressed that there had been two serious reasons which stayed at the basis of the confiscation of the money from Luca Filat. ‘’It is about the purchasing of an extremely expensive vehicle (several hundreds of thousands of pounds) by a student and the renting of a quite costly dwelling. In the trial, the person was not able to explain the origin of the money; therefore, the magistrates ruled to confiscate it. The law works quite well, there are daily numerous dubious transactions which are analyzed by British authorities and it is quite possible that also other Moldovan citizens make a suspicious transaction which will be reported to the British authorities and this law will be enforced in this case again. I cannot say whether also other Moldovans are presently concerned in pending files regarding the confiscation or freezing of a sum of money under the aforementioned law,’’ the diplomat noted.   

Last year, the Great Britain returned Moldova more than 458,000 pounds – money confiscated from Luca Filat, the son of the former prime minister, Vlad Filat. The money reached over 550 personal assistants for people with severe disabilities from Moldova.