Moldova urges wider probe after ex-tycoon gets 19-year sentence

A Chișinău court’s 19-year sentence for Vladimir Plahotniuc did not close Moldova’s most corrosive corruption case. Instead, it sharpened the central question that has haunted the country for more than a decade: how did $1 billion vanish from three banks, and who else helped make it happen?

Plahotniuc, once one of Moldova’s richest men and a former leader of the Democratic Party of Moldova, was convicted in absentia in the case widely known as the “theft of the century.” Prosecutors had sought a 25-year sentence. He denied wrongdoing, and his lawyer said the verdict was driven by public pressure and political interests. The court also ordered the seizure of more than 1.1 billion Moldovan lei, about $64 million, in assets.

The missing $1 billion was enormous for a country of Moldova’s size, equal to roughly 12% of GDP at the time. The money was allegedly pushed out through dubious loans, asset swaps and shareholder deals, leaving not just a financial wound but a lasting institutional one. The scandal continues to shape how Moldovans view the state, the courts and the political class that failed to stop it.

Igor Grosu said the case could not end with one man because the scale of the fraud showed Plahotniuc could not have acted alone. That argument goes to the heart of the unfinished investigation: which bankers, intermediaries, officials and political allies enabled the transfers, and which institutions looked away while the money moved? Anti-corruption prosecutors still have three more cases against Plahotniuc, keeping the wider inquiry alive.

The case is also a reminder of how power worked in Moldova during Plahotniuc’s rise. Euronews described the country as a “captured state” from 2013 to 2019, when he wielded de facto influence over the legislature, executive branch, law enforcement and courts without ever holding the top state offices. He fled Moldova in 2019 after losing power.

Other names have already surfaced in related proceedings, including Andrian Candu, a former parliament speaker and Plahotniuc ally, underscoring how far the network may have reached. For Moldovans, the verdict against Plahotniuc is a milestone, but not an accounting. The real test now is whether prosecutors can follow the money all the way through the state and prove that the “theft of the century” was not the work of one man, but of a system that protected him.