Moldova Jails Ex-deputy for Spying for Russia

A court has jailed former deputy Iurie Bolboceanu for 14 years for spying for Moscow – making him the first [ex] deputy to be jailed in Moldova since independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991.

Moldovan Information and Security Service Headquarters. Photo: SIS official website.

Moldova courts on Tuesday jailed a former deputy, Iurie Bolboceanu, for 14 years, for “betraying his homeland” by spying for Russia.

The Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime and Special Investigations, PCCOCS, said the Russian Military Intelligence Agency, the GRU, recruited him from October 5, 2016, to March 17, 2017.

Bolboceanu was found guilty of passing classified information to Russia on the strategies behind major national legislative reforms.

He was found to be in regular contact with the former Russian Deputy Military Attaché in Chisinau, Aleksandr Grudin.

The Moldovan secret services in March 2017 provided photos, recordings and videos of the two of them meeting together and discussing matters in public.

This scandal triggered a diplomatic conflict after Moldova then expelled five Russian diplomats, including Grudin, on suspicion of conducting spying on Moldovan soil. In return, Moscow expelled five Moldovan diplomats.

The episode seriously damaged Moldovan-Russian relations up to the highest officials.

Tensions escalated soon after even more. In August 2017, Moldova declared Russia’s vice-premier, Dmitry Rogozin, persona non-grata. Despite that, he defied the Moldovan authorities and attended a celebration in the pro-Russian breakaway Transnistria region.

Russian authorities since declared the leader of Moldova’s pro-European ruling party, Vlad Plahotniuc a “person of interest,” and a court in Moscow issued an arrest warrant in his name in December 2017.