The lawyers of fugitive Kyiv judge Mykola Chaus have asked the Moldovan president to grant their client political asylum, the head of the Moldovan Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office, Viorel Morari, has told the Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform.
"At present, Chaus has been arrested for 15 days after he voluntarily reported himself to law-enforcement bodies for illegally crossing he Moldovan border. Now that we have received Chaus's extradition file from the Prosecutor-General's Office of Ukraine, we are preparing requisite documents to carry out this procedure. At the same time, his defence asked the Moldovan president to grant Mykola Chaus political asylum," he said.
In Ukraine, Chaus is suspected of accepting a 150,000-dollar bribe in exchange for a suspended sentence to a retired woman selling narcotics. He received media publicity after it turned out that he was hiding his money in glass jars, one of which he buried in the garden.