CHISINAU. March 31 (Interfax) - Evghenia Gutul, the head of the autonomous unit of Gagauzia in Moldova, who has been arrested on charges of receiving illegal financing from a criminal group, has appealed to U.S. President Donald Trump for securing her release.
"I am asking for moral and political support from Mr. President of the United States as a leader of a superpower," Gutul said in a letter she forwarded to the U.S. administration via her lawyers.
Gagauzia "is experiencing unprecedented pressure from the Republic of Moldova's authorities. They are eliminating political opposition and trampling on the rights of Gagauzia's residents," while the European Union "in fact encourages these unlawful actions, giving Chisinau a free hand to commit political reprisals," Gutul said in her letter.
"Before our very eyes, the Romanian scenario is being played out in Gagauzia, which includes an illegal arrest of a democratically elected leader, intimidation, blackmail, terror, and repressions," she said.
At this critical moment, "the U.S. administration's tough position is important as never before," Gutul said. She said she believed Trump could "help prevent the situation from devolving into a new civilian conflict and put an end to an escalation triggered by the PAS [the Party of Action and Solidarity] regime," she said.
Gutul urged the U.S. leadership "to use all available diplomatic means to prevent the crisis from worsening and protect the rights of the Gagauz people."
Gutul was detained at Chisinau Airport while checking in for a flight to Istanbul on March 25. Authorities took away her passport and brought her to a detention facility of the National Anticorruption Center, declaring that she was detained for 72 hours. On March 28, Gutul appealed for support to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The same day, a court ruled to take her into pretrial custody for 20 days.
On Monday, Gutul was brought to a courthouse from the detention center. The court is currently hearing a motion from prosecutors on arresting her for 30 days, as she is a defendant in three different criminal cases.
As reported earlier, Gutul was detained on charges of the illegal funding of her election campaign in 2023. She is suspected of falsifying documents on donations from individual supporters in her favor during the election campaign and documents confirming its financing sources with the help of the campaign's treasurer. The National Anticorruption Center said Gutul's bank account opened specifically for running in the election was used to receive 370,000 lei, or around $20,000, from illegal sources and spend these funds during the campaign.
Gutul is also a defendant in two other criminal cases that are at final stages in courts. They deal with the illegal financing of her political activity with money from Russia and participation in organizing protests in Chisinau in 2022. Gutul has denied any wrongdoing and branded the cases as politically motivated.
Gutul's detention was preceded by a statement from the Moldovan Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office on completing the presentation of evidence in a case dealing with the illegal financing of the Shor party, where Gutul and the party's secretary, Svetlana Popan, are defendants.
The U.S. and the European Union put Gutul on their sanction lists in 2024. The EU's governing bodies believe Gutul and several other Gagauz politicians are destabilizing the situation in Moldova.
Some commentators attributed Gutul's detention to the fact that a number of Moldovan parliamentarians from the Shor party and other parties, who are being tried on charges of "corruption and receiving illegal financing from an organized criminal group," among them Marina Tauber, Alexandr Nesterovschi, and Irina Lozovan, went missing a few days before courts were to hand down their rulings in the respective cases.