The authorities in the EU candidate state have announced raids over alleged election violations.
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 Moldova announced on Thursday they had carried out 78 warranted 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 actions are directed at silencing his movement. The bloc is trying to overturn the ban preventing it from taking part in Moldova’s upcoming parliamentary elections.
“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.”
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 September elections. The Kremlin has rejected the claim, calling it another attempt by Chisinau to deflect attention from what it described as 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.
