Customs officers detain acting head of Moldova Police General Inspectorate in Moscow

Georgij Kavkalyuk, the acting head of the Police General Inspectorate of Moldova, has been detained at Domodedovo Airport in Moscow for three hours. Kavkalyuk was flying to Minsk to attend the meeting of the CIS Law-Enforcement Agencies.

According to Moldova, the reason of Kavkalyuk’s detention was his professional activity. Kavkalyuk commented on the incident to Publika TV: “It is connected with my professional activity. I have always documented international crimes connected with unconscientious citizens of the Republic of Moldova. I am an officer who fulfills his duty to the motherland.”

“They detained me 10 minutes after entered the customs point. They said there were problems with my documents. I proved them that there are no problems with my documents pointing at the stamps of more than 20 countries I had visited. Then they told me there was another reason to detain me – they said I was allegedly like the man who is on the wanted-list in Russia.” Kavkalyuk said.

In his words, the Federal Security Service officers mistreated him: “Although I introduced myself and told them about the goal of my trip, they did not treat me adequately. They did not explain why I was detained, even after they found out that I am not on the wanted-list. Some apologized to me, others not. I think they set me free thanks to Foreign Minister Natalia Gherman.”

Moldovan Interior Minister Oleg Balan says on his arrival in Minsk he will demand explanation from the Interior Ministry of Russia. Representatives of the Moldovan Foreign Ministry try to verify the reasons of the detention.  “So far, we have received no official information from the Russian authorities. The Embassy of Moldova in Moscow has already launched the necessary procedures to verify the circumstances of the incident,” says Anna Taban, the spokesperson for the Moldovan Foreign Ministry.

The Russian Frontier Service did not confirm the reports on detention of the Moldovan high-ranking police officer. “Kavkalyuk was not detained. It were border management procedures that did not go beyond the methods of border management approved by the Russian Government’s enactment No.50 dating back to Feb 2, 2005,” Russia’s Federal Security Service frontier department told TASS.