The Prosecutor General's Office has indicted 16 Russian nationals on charges of using forged documents, aiding and abetting computer forgery and aiding and abetting the forgery of official documents in a case in which they are accused of using falsified citizenship certificates to obtain Romanian identity documents.
According to the Prosecutor General's Office, the 16 defendants, all Russian Federation citizens, repeatedly used false citizenship certificates that falsely attested to their status as Romanian citizens in order to obtain Romanian identity documents, agerpres reports.
Specifically, between February and July 2024, the defendants used citizenship certificates purportedly issued by the Romanian Consulate General in St Petersburg, the Romanian Embassy in Baku, the Romanian Embassy in the Republic of Moldova and the Romanian Consulate General in Chisinau.
'These documents falsely attested that the defendants had acquired Romanian citizenship. On the basis of these certificates, they obtained the registration of their birth certificates in the National Register of Persons, the allocation of Romanian personal identification numbers and the issuance of Romanian birth certificates by the Local Council of Sector 6. Subsequently, following applications submitted to the Campulung Moldovenesc Community Public Service for Personal Records (SPCLEP), to which they attached the citizenship certificates purportedly issued by the aforementioned consulates or embassies and the birth certificates issued by the Local Council of Sector 6, they obtained identity cards issued by the Campulung Moldovenesc SPCLEP. They also obtained simple electronic passports issued by the Suceava Community Public Service for Passports on the basis of those identity cards,' the Prosecutor General's Office said.
The money received by individuals who fictitiously registered the defendants as residents at their properties in exchange for payment is to be confiscated.
To restore the previous legal position, the prosecutor handling the case has asked the court to annul the falsified citizenship certificates, the entries concerning the defendants' births in the civil status registers, their birth and marriage records, their birth certificates and all subsequent documents obtained on the basis of the falsified citizenship certificates, namely their identity cards and passports.
Prosecutors said that, following police checks at properties where the defendants and other foreign nationals born in the former Soviet Union had registered their residence, the Directorate-General for Personal Records had taken measures to cancel 1,702 identity cards on the grounds that the registered residences were fictitious. The other foreign nationals had acquired Romanian citizenship and applied to change their registered residence from abroad to Romania.
The indictment has been sent to the Campulung Moldovenesc Court, which has jurisdiction to hear the case at first instance.
In connection with this case, six plea agreements had previously been concluded, involving the same legal classification of the offences and the same pattern of facts.
