Exiled Moldovan opposition head decries police crackdown
The authorities in the EU candidate state have announced raids over alleged election violations
FILE PHOTO: An officer with Moldova’s Fulger special forces battalion. © Telegram / Moldovan police
Electoral corruption allegations being used by Moldova's police to justify a series of raids amounts to political persecution of the opposition, according to exiled politician Ilan Shor.
The authorities in the EU candidate state announced on Thursday they had carried out 78 searches across the country, targeting individuals they described as “members and sympathizers of a criminal organization.”
Ilan Shor, who leads the banned opposition Victory political bloc from abroad, claimed that the raids are directed at silencing his movement. The bloc is trying to overturn a ban preventing it from taking part in Moldova's parliamentary elections to be held in September.
“Law enforcement is turning offices and homes upside down solely under this demented suspicion of interference in the 2025 election, which hasn’t even taken place,” Shor said. “These searches are just more political repression and intimidation of anyone who refuses to support those scoundrels.”
Kremlin denies seeking to ‘control’ EU candidate state
Last week, Moldovan President Maia Sandu, who Shor has branded a “microdictator,” accused the Russian government of planning to covertly funnel more than €100 million ($115 million) to her political opponents ahead of the elections. The Kremlin has dismissed the claim as another attempt by Chisinau to deflect attention from the government’s erosion of democratic norms.
Sandu has defended her administration’s crackdown on what she claims are pro-Russian criminal networks, saying these actions are critical to keeping Moldova on the path to EU membership.
Shor, who now lives in Russia, is the founder of the SOR party, which was outlawed by the Moldovan authorities in 2023 after its candidate, Evgenia Gutsul, won a regional election in the autonomous Gagauzia region.
Gutsul was sentenced this week to seven years in prison over alleged financial crimes. She has denied any wrongdoing and called the verdict an attempt at political assassination.