Fugitive Veaceslav Platon not to be heard in Bank Fraud case involving Vlad Plahotniuc; judges reject his request

Controversial businessman Veaceslav Platon, who is hiding in London from Moldova’s justice system, will not be heard as a witness in the case in which former leader of the Moldovan Democratic Party (PDM), Vladimir Plahotniuc, is indicted. The request filed by Platon was rejected today by the judges.

Both state prosecutors and defense lawyers requested that Platon’s application be dismissed.

At the same hearing, in the absence of defendant Vlad Plahotniuc, the panel of judges heard two other witnesses: Viorel Melnic, former chairman of the Board of Directors of Unibank, and Sergiu Berghie, former administrator at Banca Sociala between 2015 and 2018.

Previously, the court has heard Alina Deleanu, former receptionist at the company Prime Management, Olga Bondarciuc, former notary, Ion Ropot, former special administrator of Moldova’s Banca de Economii (Savings Bank), and Dorin Dragutanu, former governor of the National Bank of Moldova. The former Speaker of Parliament Andrian Candu, former head of Victoriabank Natalia Politov-Cangas, as well as former Prime Minister Iurie Leanca have also testified before the court.

So far, the court has approved the hearing of 27 witnesses and the procedure of summoning the others continues.

The list of witnesses also includes former leaders of the National Bank of Moldova, former officials, former administrators of the banks involved in the bank fraud, as well as more persons indicted in cases connected to the “stolen billion” scheme.

Vlad Plahotniuc has been in pre-trial detention since 25 September 2025, after being extradited from Greece, at which time four arrest warrants issued in his name were enforced. He is currently held in Penitentiary No. 13 of Chisinau and is under investigation in four high-profile criminal cases related, among other things, to the formation and leadership of a criminal organization, fraud, money laundering and bank fraud.

Veaceslav Platon left Moldova in the summer of 2021, after then-Prosecutor General Alexandr Stoianoglo granted, in 2020, a request to suspend the execution of his 18-year prison sentence. Platon remains under investigation in more cases in Moldova, most of them linked to bank fraud and schemes to embezzle funds from the Moldovan banking system. Three other separate criminal cases are still pending before national courts.

In 2023, Platon was sentenced by a Russian court to 20 years in prison for allegedly facilitating the illegal transfer abroad of 126 billion rubles (approximately 2.9 billion euros at the 2013 exchange rate) through the criminal scheme widely known to the public as the “Laundromat”. He is also included on Canada’s sanctions lists.

On 13 March 2025, Veaceslav Platon was detained in the United Kingdom. He remained in custody until 23 July 2025, when a London court agreed to release him on bail in exchange for 330,000 pounds sterling, the equivalent of about 7.4 million lei. On 24 July 2025, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Moldova said that this was merely a “change of preventive measure” and that the decision on extradition was still to be taken by the British authorities.