Episode Description
Challenged by a legacy of oligarchic state capture and a war raging in neighboring Ukraine, Moldova has made significant strides in recent years in putting in place anti-corruption structures that strengthen the rule of law and democratic institutions. At the forefront of that effort is Moldova’s Chief Anti-Corruption Prosecutor, Veronica Dragalin, a former Assistant United States Attorney who emigrated from Moldova as a child.
In this episode of Democracy that Delivers, Dragalin discusses her innovations that she’s introduced such as plea agreements, as well as the importance of building trust in the judiciary among a skeptical public. She joins Frank Brown, Director of CIPE’s Anti-Corruption & Governance Center, and Natalia Otel Belan, Director of CIPE’s Europe and Eurasia Division, to highlight her unique personal story, explain Moldova’s prosecutorial process, share the challenges and innovative tactics her office has used to crack down on corrupt behavior, and preview future plans for addressing corruption.
This podcast is brought to you by CIPE’s Anti-Corruption & Governance Center.
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Transcript
00;00;00;00 – 00;00;30;21
Voiceover
The Democracy That Delivers podcast is brought to you today by the Anti-Corruption and Governance Center at site. This is the podcast where we talk about corruption in its many forms. And now to your host, Frank Brown.
00;00;30;24 – 00;00;59;17
Frank Brown
Welcome, everybody to the Democracy That Delivers podcast here at Site Center for International Private Enterprise. My name is Frank Brown and I’m the director of the Anti-Corruption Governance Center at CIPE. And this is part of a continuing series of podcasts put on by the Anti-Corruption and Governance Center that are focused on anti-corruption issues that are of interest to the broader global anti-corruption community. Today, we have a very special guest with us, and I had the pleasure of meeting her at a recent international anti-corruption conference in Paris. I was struck immediately, both by the challenges of her job and the sort of innovations that she’s bringing to performing her job.
00;00;59;20 – 00;01;30;07
Frank Brown
Her name is Veronica Dragalin, and she’s the chief of the Anti-Corruption Prosecution Office in the Republic of Moldova. And this is significant, I think, to you listeners for a couple of reasons. One is that Moldova is geographically located in an especially rough part of the world, its neighbor to the north. Ukraine is in the midst of a two year plus war with Russia defending itself against aggression that started in February of 2022.
00;01;30;10 – 00;01;55;10
Frank Brown
And Moldova, by many accounts, is next in line in terms of being threatened by this Russian aggression. It’s a possibility. So that’s one layer of complexity regarding Moldovan anti-corruption. And the other is that Moldova, as a post-Soviet post-communist state, is dealing with all sorts of corrupt structures. And whether you’re in the business world, the political world, that have implications for the broader neighborhood.
00;01;55;12 – 00;02;29;12
Frank Brown
So all of those former Soviet republics, now independent sovereign states, tend to deal with similar issues. And so the experience of somebody like Veronica, who is working to fight corruption, using innovative approaches that she picked up as an assistant and or prosecutor in Los Angeles is especially enlightening and interesting. We’re also very, very privileged today to be joined by my co-host, Natalia Otel Belan, who is the head of CIPE’s fastest growing and largest regional department,
00;02;29;12 – 00;03;03;16
Frank Brown
the Europe and Eurasia Department, and herself is a native of Moldova and I think brings that especially informed point of view in line of questioning to this podcast. So welcome to you both from I couldn’t tell you.
Veronica Dragalin
Hi, thank you for having me.
Natalia Otel Belan
Very happy to be here.
Frank Brown
I’ll start off with the first question, if you could talk a little bit about your background, specifically how you ended up back in Moldova after 30 years of not being there and taking a job that paid to be a fraction of what you were paid as an assistant federal prosecutor in Los Angeles?
00;03;03;19 – 00;03;29;14
Veronica Dragalin
Yes, I often get that question because it may seem like a serious decision to make in one’s life, but it was one that made a lot of sense for me at this point of my career and my life. My family left Moldova in 1992, and I was only seven years old. And we first lived in Italy, Germany, and eventually emigrated to the United States where we’ve lived since then.
00;03;29;17 – 00;04;04;19
Veronica Dragalin
So I was educated in the United States. I went to law school, became a federal prosecutor. As you mentioned, and I was actually working in the public corruption and civil rights section at the US Attorney’s office. So, I had always had an interest in specializing in fighting corruption. In large part, that was due to my personal experience coming back to Moldova, visiting family every summer and seeing the realities of a country where systemic corruption is a much more visible problem than the other types of corruption that, of course, exist everywhere in the world, but are different here.
00;04;04;19 – 00;04;28;21
Veronica Dragalin
And so in 2022 there was a legislative change made and here in Moldova that allowed Moldovan citizens with experience abroad to apply for this position for the first time in its history. And I decided to apply. I wasn’t sure if I would be selected and eventually when I was, I decided to accept the position. Even though it was a very challenging time.
00;04;28;22 – 00;04;51;22
Veronica Dragalin
I decided to accept it in June 2022. So only a few months after the war next door started. For me, the start of the war actually made this job that much more important because fighting for democracy, for the principles that we are trying to all stand for is even more important in the face of the adversities that are affecting this part of the world.
00;04;51;25 – 00;05;19;24
Frank Brown
Veronica, so can you describe what you do as an anti-corruption chief prosecutor?
Veronica Dragalin
Sure. So in Moldova, which is a relatively small country, so we our population is 2.5 million. We have a large amount of people that live abroad, a very strong diaspora, both in Europe and the United States and elsewhere in the world. The prosecution service here is organized with two specialized prosecution officers, one of which is the Anti-Corruption Prosecution Office.
00;05;19;27 – 00;05;48;02
Veronica Dragalin
It has 50 prosecutors and several law enforcement officers and other types of staff. In total, about 115 people on my team. And so what I do as a chief of the anticorruption prosecution office is oversee all of our activity. And lately that has included going through some pretty major reforms in terms of trying to strengthen our institution, to make us be independent, autonomous and equable, of facing the various problems that will do both these things.
00;05;48;03 – 00;06;14;18
Veronica Dragalin
In terms of fighting corruption, in particular, in the last year and a half or so, we’ve seen one somewhat new phenomenon in terms of the scale of it, which is dirty money coming from Russia intended to be used illegally in campaign financing and to buy votes in the and various elections. And so that’s something that my office is responsible for handling
00;06;14;20 – 00;06;38;02
Veronica Dragalin
And so a lot of challenges in terms of the types of problems we’re dealing with, the systemic corruption, as I mentioned, which continues to exist to this day. We’ve had some major cases of a bank fraud, a Russian laundromat, which is something others may have heard about, where in 22 billion U.S. dollars was laundered through NGOs here in Moldova with the help of corrupt Moldovan judges.
00;06;38;04 – 00;07;02;06
Veronica Dragalin
And so we have a lot on our plate. We’re very busy prosecuting things from a long time ago, but also prosecuting very active things that are happening today that we’re trying to manage. So, I had a quick follow up question from you. And this is based on experience working in some other former communist countries, and that is that often the judiciary itself and you just indicated this has integrity challenges.
00;07;02;06 – 00;07;25;07
Veronica Dragalin
You have corrupt judges. So could you explain a little bit how it works once you build your case against somebody who’s violated a statute in Moldova? How specific are the next steps to anti-corruption? Yes, that’s a very timely question for Moldova, because there’s been a lot of discussion here about changing the legislation to create a specialized anti-corruption court.
00;07;25;10 – 00;07;53;04
Veronica Dragalin
So obviously, we have a specialized anti-corruption prosecution office. We also have a specialized anti-corruption law enforcement agency, the National Anti-Corruption Center here in Moldova. And we’ve had a lot of discussions over the years in Moldova about whether it makes sense or not to have a specialized court as well. Our neighbors in Ukraine, Ukraine has such a court that my understanding from from speaking to colleagues there that that’s been instrumental in their fight against corruption, there, they’ve been able to move cases a lot faster.
00;07;53;07 – 00;08;30;05
Veronica Dragalin
This vetted anti-corruption court in Moldova, there’s opinions on both sides. We’re very, very small as a country. And so to create an entire specialized court for a relatively small volume of cases and, you know, in total, there’s only 400 judges nationally. So thinking about creating a specified court might not make the most sense. But what has started taking place in the last few months, which has actually been very, very productive, is that nine judges within the main court here in Juneau have been specialized to receive anti-corruption cases that are being sent to court by our office.
00;08;30;07 – 00;08;56;12
Veronica Dragalin
And so it’s not a separate court, but these particular judges have been freed of all the rest of the types of cases they can concentrate on. All of our corruption cases from morning to afternoon, from Monday to Friday. And we’ve already seen it’s only been in effect for less than two months. But we’re already seeing a major shift in how quickly these things are progressing once the cases get to court, because the hearings can all be scheduled much quicker.
00;08;56;12 – 00;09;18;28
Veronica Dragalin
And I really am optimistic about the positive change this will have. So perhaps, you know, we’ll have this kind of idea of a specialized anti-corruption judges as opposed to necessarily a separate court to prove. And I think that has incredible relevance for other countries, especially smaller ones, which, as you point out, may not have the resources and the luxury of creating this whole separate apparatus.
00;09;19;05 – 00;09;53;04
Veronica Dragalin
But this is another way to to make it more efficient for the process.
Frank Brown
So, Veronica, one of the things that we talked about earlier when we had a chance to chat was about clear grievance and the way that you’re using them there to expedite cases and to move things along in a more efficient way. And when you when you first referenced the agreements in our conversation that got me to thinking about all sorts of issues around trust of the judiciary and a sense of justice being done, it might come up in a post-communist communist context.
00;09;53;10 – 00;10;17;22
Frank Brown
So I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.
Veronica Dragalin
Yes, it is very fascinating to me to compare the American judicial system that I was educated in and worked in to the one here in Moldova and in other post-Soviet countries. We have very similar penal codes or criminal procedural codes. One thing that’s very noticeable right away is how specific the Criminal Procedure Code is.
00;10;17;22 – 00;10;46;09
Veronica Dragalin
Here everything is spelled out. One example that I often give is, you know, in the United States, the federal judicial code had about 61 rules. Here. There were like 560. So. Right. It’s just everything’s spelled out much more concretely. And what the other major difference I’ve noticed is prosecutors generally have a lot less discretion. So things are just written down in the law, and that is what has to happen.
00;10;46;11 – 00;11;10;17
Veronica Dragalin
It’s a system of compulsory prosecution. So if we are notified about a potential crime, we are obligated to investigate it. So we don’t have any discretion to say, you know, we have limited resources. That’s not a significant enough crime that makes sense for us to focus on. That’s not an option. Whereas in the United States, prosecutorial discretion is much more I would say it exists much more than it does here.
00;11;10;17 – 00;11;32;08
Veronica Dragalin
And that may have a tie with what you mentioned, which is just the inherent trust in society in those institutions. So when there’s more of a trust in prosecutors, judges, you are more open as a society to give them more discretion. Whereas I think here there’s there’s been historically a lack of trust because of major abuses committed in the past.
00;11;32;11 – 00;11;57;17
Veronica Dragalin
And so things are much more detail oriented and bureaucratic to our citizens detriment, in my view. Right, Because if you make things too rigid and you don’t give prosecutors and judges flexibility and discretion, you then can be in a situation like we have been, which is we have hundreds and hundreds of cases, and we cannot actually prioritize efficiently our very limited resources to make the biggest impact.
00;11;57;20 – 00;12;28;07
Veronica Dragalin
So that’s one thing that I’ve noticed. There’s a big difference between the two systems.
Natalia Otel Belan
Veronica, as you know, shape we work primarily with the private sector. These are our main stakeholders and corruption is one of the core, let’s say, challenges that private sector faces, especially in the in the Europe and Eurasia region. As you are working as a chief prosecutor in Moldova and not only trying to prosecute corruption cases and really you’re also trying to reform the anti-corruption system in Moldova, a part of that transformation.
00;12;28;10 – 00;12;53;27
Veronica Dragalin
What does all this mean for the private sector? How does Moldova become a more attractive country for foreign investment? How does Moldova business are able to do business with integrity? So help us understand how your work is relevant for the private sector.
Veronica Dragalin
Yes, absolutely. I think the rule of law in a country is something that gives everyone more security in terms of predictability and confidence that they could invest here.
00;12;53;27 – 00;13;19;29
Veronica Dragalin
And if something goes wrong, they’ll be able to go to court and get their problems solved. When there’s a lack of trust in the judicial system, in the rule of law, it becomes obviously much more risky for good faith investors. I think there are plenty probably of businesses around that look for these types of places where you can get things resolved through cash payments and other illicit means.
00;13;20;02 – 00;13;44;13
Veronica Dragalin
But for legitimate investors who want to respect the law, being able to be in a country where where the rule of law and anti-corruption is effective is what makes something more attractive. And unfortunately, I think here in Moldova over the years, there have been examples of law enforcement officers or even with the help of prosecutors and judges extorting money from businesses.
00;13;44;17 – 00;14;05;13
Veronica Dragalin
I’d be opening a criminal case just so that they would get a pay off to close the case. And having those types of schemes be used against big companies is more lucrative than just an individual. So unfortunately, when there’s a reputation or a perception that that exists in a particular place, it makes it much less attractive for investment.
00;14;05;20 – 00;14;43;05
Veronica Dragalin
So it’s very, very important to make clear that the Anti-Corruption Prosecution Office of Moldova applies the law equally to all when someone is legitimately violating it or not opening criminal investigations for the sake of other illicit things and that’s a big part of what message I’m trying to make sure is constantly being put out there. I’m trying to be more transparent with our activity so that people understand what it is that we’re doing and why, and give the public more trust in one of its important state institutions, which is the prosecution office, at least.
00;14;43;05 – 00;15;12;29
Frank Brown
Right to the next question. In my experience, there’s a lag time between countries that are aggressively attacking corruption and all the successes they’re having and the business communities recognition of that and sort of adjusting their risk assessment for a particular country. And the lag time often has to do with the degree of transparency by folks like you and how quickly and clearly you’re talking about what you’re doing and the impact eventually impact upon the private sector.
00;15;13;01 – 00;15;35;11
Frank Brown
I’m just wondering if you could talk a little bit about your philosophy regarding transparency generally in regards to what you do.
Veronica Dragalin
Absolutely. I have a weekly meeting with my team on Monday mornings, and one of the things that I say very often is encouraging them to let me know when they’ve gotten a sentence or let me know when something good has happened so that we can issued a press release.
00;15;35;13 – 00;15;54;03
Veronica Dragalin
Because if you’re doing really good work behind closed doors and no one hears about it, I don’t know what big impact that has, especially when we are working in the interest of citizens and of the citizens don’t know what successes we’re having, then too bad things are happening. No one understands how the justice system even works by what we even hear.
00;15;54;05 – 00;16;28;05
Veronica Dragalin
But the more important one is the impact or deterrence, especially in public corruption cases. I think one of the main aims of it is that we make clear what is corruption, what is not corruption, right? This is one area of the law that the lines kind of change all the time. And so being very clear about the types of things that constitute corruption so that it’s clear for people not to offer some money to a doctor in exchange for services, etc., and to make clear that there are consequences to people that ask for bribes, for people that fear bribes.
00;16;28;12 – 00;16;49;13
Veronica Dragalin
And through that, we encourage everyone to respect the law and deter them from committing these types of crimes. They should understand that the risk is not worth the reward. Right? It’s said that the risk of getting caught, the consequences of being prosecuted are way too high. And unfortunately, in Moldova, that hasn’t really been the case in terms of the consequences that you get for some of these crimes.
00;16;49;13 – 00;17;10;27
Veronica Dragalin
The statute of limitations was relatively short for many crimes. For many years now that’s been extended. The punishments were relatively modest for for corruption crimes, which again has been modified over the years. So I think, you know, we have such an important role of being transparent and communicating these things so that people understand that main message, which is to stop corruption from happening.
00;17;10;27 – 00;17;31;10
Veronica Dragalin
Right. Our main goal is not to fill prisons with people because that’s not good for anyone. It’s to stop people from engaging in corruption and have them realize that even from sort of a business perspective, it’s not make sense to pay a bribe because cost of that, if you get caught, are way too high.
Frank Brown
Speaking of deterrence, you’ve been in the office for about two years now.
00;17;31;10 – 00;17;52;17
Frank Brown
So do you see that your work is actually producing that effect of deterrence? So can you give us some examples of specific successes that you can point to?
Veronica Dragalin
I think it’s too early now to tell whether it’s having a deterrent effect, especially as we probably all know from our participation in international conferences, measuring corruption is itself relatively difficult.
00;17;52;20 – 00;18;38;03
Veronica Dragalin
That said, I will do a plug here for Moldova’s achievements and that in the last five years, from 2019 to 2023, Moldova went up 44 places in the transboundary and international corruption perception Index. So we had a huge improvement 29 spot in the last two years. So I would say that we’ve had significant progress in deterring corruption because according to these studies that are being done by Transparency International and other reputable organizations, when people respond about their perception of how much corruption exists in the country today, the results indicate that it’s a lot less than there was five years ago when we had an oligarch who’s now a fugitive and mainly controlling the country.
00;18;38;07 – 00;19;06;06
Veronica Dragalin
So that’s a really great indicator. And I would say that our office lately has had some great examples, a success. We’ve had some significant convictions in older cases. Just yesterday we actually had our first Court of appeals conviction in the laundromat case of one of the judges involved in the Laundromat case. So we’ve had several judges who have been convicted at the first instance court for issuing illegal poor decisions that contributed to the large money laundering scheme.
00;19;06;08 – 00;19;32;14
Veronica Dragalin
And yesterday we had the first affirmation at the Court of Appeal level to hold that judge responsible. We’ve been able, through international cooperation in the last two years, these assets and worth more than total €80 million in countries around Europe, which is really significant for us. I think historically it’s huge, huge amounts. We don’t have anything like that that we succeeded in doing in the past.
00;19;32;17 – 00;19;59;00
Veronica Dragalin
And our office in the last year has sent to court indicted cases against many more high level officials than we ever had in the past, including a former prime minister or a former president. Judges, current and former members of parliament. So I think we’re doing a lot of good work in terms of finishing our investigations. Everyone is constantly waiting for the final, final results, which are people in prison and confiscated assets.
00;19;59;03 – 00;20;19;20
Veronica Dragalin
And I try to repeat every time and explain that the judicial process is a long one, but that’s actually the sign of a healthy justice system that, you know, we got people in prison three weeks after arresting them, then certainly that would be a reflection of what’s a living in a democratic society. So it will take more time to really see all of the results.
00;20;19;20 – 00;20;38;20
Veronica Dragalin
But I think we’re heading in a really good direction and we’ve had very good intermediary results so far.
Frank Brown
this touches upon something that’s always fascinated me, and I think you’re uniquely qualified to comment upon it. So you leave Moldova when you’re seven and you build a career in the U.S. after being raised there and educated and everything else.
00;20;38;22 – 00;21;03;04
Frank Brown
The U.S. has a very strong rule of law. The trust of the judiciary tends to be quite high and trust of government is not as strong as it used to be, but it’s still quite high. And then then you return to this environment where, at least based on my experience, there’s tremendous skepticism about who government serves, a lot of wariness and caution around any sort of law enforcement process.
00;21;03;07 – 00;21;20;00
Frank Brown
And then and you’re describing all these wins, right? Which on the face of them should be building trust among the people of Moldova to a point where you can you can begin to build a healthy rule of law society. I’m just wondering, how do you deal with that? In other words, where are we in terms of Moldova’s evolution?
00;21;20;00 – 00;21;40;14
Frank Brown
Where are we on that road?
Veronica Dragalin
The thing that I find very encouraging and I have since the moment I got here is the number of people that instead of paying a bribe or instead of accepting a bribe, come and tell us about it. And they do so at a tremendous cost to them oftentimes, because that really then pulls them into a whole criminal procedure.
00;21;40;14 – 00;22;13;17
Veronica Dragalin
They have to become witnesses, They have to testify. It’s not easy, but yet we have plenty of people that choose that. And when they choose to come, tell us about it. To me, that’s it’s volumes of the fact that they have trust that our institution will do the right thing, otherwise they wouldn’t come here. Right. And so the fact that I’ve seen so many examples of really courageous people that have come forward and have done things that are beyond just reporting, you know, they’ve then agreed to, for example, wear a wire and go record the next meeting or do other things.
00;22;13;17 – 00;22;39;19
Veronica Dragalin
I mean, that’s incredible from my perspective, right? We’ve chosen this as a career that other people that are willing to kind of put themselves out there and they’re doing it also in the interest of their country. Right. They don’t want corruption to exist either. And so the fact that we have continuously people coming in and telling us the type of information at great cost to their personal lives is a big indicator that something is working and going in the right direction.
00;22;39;19 – 00;23;03;11
Veronica Dragalin
And I would say that in recent months we’ve gotten more high level complaints. We used to get relatively low level. You know, a police officer pulled me over and asked for a bribe. But lately I’ve met personally with some people that are telling us about schemes that are much more high level and complex, and that’s an indicator that, you know, we are having some successes in building that trust.
00;23;03;11 – 00;23;40;24
Veronica Dragalin
And I think if we continue implementing these these policies and being transparent about them going forward, that trust will only be stronger. And the impact and effects will be positive after that.
Frank Brown
That’s absolutely sort of from a sociological point of view of estimating that process, because I know in cultures where the government didn’t necessarily represent the people or was somehow loyal to some foreign entity, like the level of distrust and the level of sort of culture around inform, or it’s people that were perceived as reformers because they were doing precisely what you’re describing can be so strong and has built up over centuries.
00;23;40;24 – 00;24;08;21
Frank Brown
It’s very hard to break down. So what you’re describing is this really, really interesting. One more question I had just on a personal level as I was thinking about your background and this journey that you made, I’m wondering how you navigated this transition from being one of many assistant federal prosecutors in your Los Angeles office to being the lead prosecutor as you are now and heading up a staff, if I understand correctly, over 100 people in three different cities in Moldova.
00;24;08;24 – 00;24;30;27
Frank Brown
What was that like?
Veronica Dragalin
Yes, definitely a major change, actually, one of probably the most noticeable ones from the beginning was having to change the language. So when I first got here, I had maybe I still do quite the American accent when I spoke Romanian because I spoke Romanian at home with, you know, family members. But we’re not really discussing, you know, jurisprudence and things of that nature.
00;24;30;27 – 00;24;55;15
Veronica Dragalin
And so it’s much more difficult to speak it in a professional, actually, and then that much more so when you’re on TV and there are images and lights flashing, you know that the pressure is really on. So this job is so much more visible, which is one of the biggest differences from my job as a federal prosecutor, where we didn’t personally communicate that that often with the public, we we had a press office that handle that.
00;24;55;23 – 00;25;19;19
Veronica Dragalin
So here I’ve had to be much more involved. I’m doing my best. Hopefully I’m doing a good job. I’m trying to emulate the leaders, my mentors that I’ve sort of looked up to throughout my career, picking up on some of the qualities that they had. I often will call them to ask for advice in difficult situations is it’s not easy to to deal with everyday occurrences that happen in this type of job at this level.
00;25;19;25 – 00;25;42;19
Veronica Dragalin
It’s been very interesting. I never, ever have a boring day. I always feel like the hours have flown by and I haven’t gotten to do all the things that I wanted to do. So for me personally, it’s been a challenge, but a really, really interesting one. I think that it builds character and life experience, so I hope I’m doing a good job for our young prosecutors that just started their careers today.
00;25;42;19 – 00;26;04;23
Veronica Dragalin
Maybe someday they can say they learned a thing or two from me being their boss too.
Frank Brown
So we’re coming to the end of the podcast and I wanted to say thank you so much to both you and to Natalia for joining us today. As a reminder to listeners, we’ve been interviewing Veronica Coquelin, who is the chief of the Anti-Corruption Prosecution Office in the Republic of Moldova.
00;26;04;26 – 00;26;23;12
Frank Brown
My co-host has been Natalia Otel Belan, the man who heads up the Europe and Eurasia Department here at CIPE, the Center for International Private Enterprise. My name is Frank Brown, and I’m the director of the Anti-Corruption and Governance Center here at CIPE. Thank you so much for joining us. And thank you, Veronica Natalia, for being here.
Natalia Otel Belan
Thank you, Veronica. Thank you, Frank.
00;26;23;17 – 00;26;36;00
Veronica Dragalin
My pleasure.
Published Date: May 23, 2024