The court of original jurisdiction recently rejected the claims filed against the CuSens newsroom by Guzun V.E. SRL, the founding company of “DaVinci” Lyceum. The litigation concerns the investigation titled “The Partnership of Private Interests” published in September 2021, after which the media outlet was involved in four lawsuits.
On May 14, Maria Muruianu, Chisinau Court magistrate, rejected the application filed by the company which was protagonist of the journalistic investigation demanding from the CuSens newsroom to disprove certain information and to recompense for moral and material damages as unfounded. The journalistic investigation under discussion covered three public and private partnerships signed by Chisinau Municipality. The journalists demonstrated “the real beneficiaries” of the process of transferring the “assets worth millions” to several private partners.
After the investigation was published, the newsroom and the authors of the material were involved in four lawsuits which were subsequently connected in three cases. They were filed by “Da Vinci” Lyeum, the Guzun V.E. company (the founder of the lyceum), Valeriu Guzun (the founder of Guzun V.E.), and Ion Guzun (Valeriu Guzun’s father).
“They keep trying to intimidate us in this way. But we know we have done our work honestly and correctly. Every word is confirmed by evidence and documents. Therefore, we are sure that this sort of harassment of journalists by lawsuits will not work in our case. They can’t prevent us from completing our investigations which shed light on all sorts of irregularities,” Olga Ceaglei, CuSens co-founder, says.
The lawsuit filed by the Guzun V.E. Company was rejected by the magistrate Maria Muruianu from the Chisinau Court, Center headquarters, on May 14. The decision can be appealed against at Chisinau Court of Appeal within 30 days from adoption.
The other three lawsuits are still ongoing and are to be examined by the magistrates of Chisinau Court.