Moldovan officials carry out raids and detain 1 over alleged Russian financing of a party

CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) — Moldova’s anticorruption agency said it carried out more than 30 raids and detained one person on Tuesday over the financing of a political party allegedly linked to Russia through cryptocurrencies, days ahead of a key parliamentary election.

The National Anticorruption Center and prosecutors from the Balti municipality said the case involves money laundering and electoral corruption. Investigators said they targeted members and supporters of a political party who were suspected of having implemented “a criminal plan” ahead of Sunday’s vote. One person was detained for 72 hours.

Moscow has repeatedly denied meddling in Moldova.

Officials said that evidence collected suggested the illegal funds “would have come from the Russian Federation, from members of a criminal group,” and transferred through cryptocurrency accounts. “These were layered and liquefied through illegal crypto exchange service providers, and subsequently converted into cash and distributed by couriers to the final recipients,” it said.

Anti-graft authorities said they seized 800,000 lei ($50,000) in cash in multiple currencies, seized accounting documents and electronic storage devices, and identified cash deliveries totaling approximately 9,000,000 lei ($540,000) made through cryptocurrencies.

Tuesday's searches were the latest in a string of investigations in the lead-up to the election on Sunday, when Moldovans will vote to choose a new 101-seat legislature. Many view the vote as a choice between Moldova’s continued path toward European Union membership or closer ties with Russia.

On Monday, 74 people were detained during 250 raids as part of an investigation into an alleged Russia-backed plan to incite “mass riots” and destabilize the country around the election.

Moldova’s authorities said that the unrest plot was “coordinated from the Russian Federation, through criminal elements” and that the suspects, who were aged between 19 and 45 years old, had traveled to Serbia where they allegedly received training.

Moldova’s pro-Western President Maia Sandu said in a statement Monday that the Kremlin is spending hundreds of millions of euros to try to sway the upcoming vote, and that her country’s “sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and European future are in danger.”

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service said in a statement on Tuesday that European politicians were attempting to ensure Moldova stayed in line with its own “Russophobic policies.”

“They plan to do this at any cost,” the statement said. It also accused European officials of attempting to falsify votes in Moldova’s upcoming elections.

In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moldova applied to join the EU and was granted candidate status that year. Brussels agreed to open accession negotiations last year.

Moldovan authorities have long accused Russia of conducting a hybrid war — meddling in elections, disinformation campaigns, illicitly funding pro-Russian parties — to try to derail the country’s path toward European Union membership.

Moldova’s westward shift further irked Moscow and tensions between the two nations skyrocketed.

Last year, Moldovans voted narrowly in favor of securing the country’s EU path and elected Sandu to a second term in a separate presidential election. Both of those votes were also overshadowed by widespread claims of Russian interference, which Moscow denied.

In the run-up to Sunday's vote, Moldovans are also facing a deluge of disinformation driven by artificial intelligence across large social media platforms and websites mimicking Western media outlets, which multiple monitoring groups have attributed to Russia or pro-Russian actors.

They say the campaigns aim to undermine support for the ruling pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity, or PAS, which Sandu founded in 2016. PAS won a clear majority in the 2021 parliamentary election but risks losing it on Sunday, with no viable pro-European alternatives on the ballot.

A spokesperson for Meta told the AP that the company is in close contact with authorities in Moldova ahead of the election and has dedicated teams who can respond quickly to “potential threats” throughout the election cycle.

“We have previously disrupted the vast majority of the inauthentic activity identified in these reports,” the spokesperson said. "We stand ready to investigate any further activity that may violate our policies.”

Google also said in a statement that it proactively tracks and tackles coordinated election-influence operations.

TikTok says it removed more than 100,000 fake accounts between July 1 and Sept. 9, and that it disrupted seven networks targeting Moldovans with political content this year. Ahead of the election, the platform has also taken down a number of accounts that violated its policies against covert influence operations.

Disinformation refers to misinformation created and spread intentionally, mainly to confuse or mislead.

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Katie Marie contributed from Manchester, U.K.

FILE - A woman mops a stage before an electoral rally of Moldova's President Maia Sandu in Magdacesti, Moldova, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File)

Women walk next to a campaign tent of the Patriotic Electoral Bloc with the slogan "We believe in Moldova" in Chisinau, Moldova, Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025, ahead of parliamentary elections taking place on Sept. 28. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A man sits in a car in front of a campaign tent of the Alternative Electoral Bloc in Chisinau, Moldova, Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025, ahead of parliamentary elections taking place on Sept. 28. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A child walks past a city fountain in a park in Chisinau, Moldova, Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

FILE - Moldova's President Maia Sandu leaves after speaking to the media during a press briefing after the polls closed for the presidential election runoff, in Chisinau, Moldova, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Myanmar insisted Friday that its deadly military campaign against the Rohingya ethnic minority was a legitimate counter-terrorism operation and did not amount to genocide, as it defended itself at the top United Nations court against an allegation of breaching the genocide convention.

Myanmar launched the campaign in Rakhine state in 2017 after an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. Security forces were accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of homes as more than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh.

“Myanmar was not obliged to remain idle and allow terrorists to have free reign of northern Rakhine state,” the country’s representative Ko Ko Hlaing told black-robed judges at the International Court of Justice.

African nation Gambia brought a case at the court in 2019 alleging that Myanmar's military actions amount to a breach of the Genocide Convention that was drawn up in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust.

Some 1.2 million members of the Rohingya minority are still languishing in chaotic, overcrowded camps in Bangladesh, where armed groups recruit children and girls as young as 12 are forced into prostitution. The sudden and severe foreign aid cuts imposed last year by U.S. President Donald Trump shuttered thousands of the camps’ schools and have caused children to starve to death.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long considered the Rohingya Muslim minority to be “Bengalis” from Bangladesh even though their families have lived in the country for generations. Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982.

As hearings opened Monday, Gambian Justice Minister Dawda Jallow said his nation filed the case after the Rohingya “endured decades of appalling persecution, and years of dehumanizing propaganda. This culminated in the savage, genocidal ‘clearance operations’ of 2016 and 2017, which were followed by continued genocidal policies meant to erase their existence in Myanmar.”

Hlaing disputed the evidence Gambia cited in its case, including the findings of an international fact-finding mission set up by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council.

“Myanmar’s position is that the Gambia has failed to meet its burden of proof," he said. "This case will be decided on the basis of proven facts, not unsubstantiated allegations. Emotional anguish and blurry factual pictures are not a substitute for rigorous presentation of facts.”

Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi represented her country at jurisdiction hearings in the case in 2019, denying that Myanmar armed forces committed genocide and instead casting the mass exodus of Rohingya people from the country she led as an unfortunate result of a battle with insurgents.

The pro-democracy icon is now in prison after being convicted of what her supporters call trumped-up charges after a military takeover of power.

Myanmar contested the court’s jurisdiction, saying Gambia was not directly involved in the conflict and therefore could not initiate a case. Both countries are signatories to the genocide convention, and in 2022, judges rejected the argument, allowing the case to move forward.

Gambia rejects Myanmar's claims that it was combating terrorism, with Jallow telling judges on Monday that “genocidal intent is the only reasonable inference that can be drawn from Myanmar’s pattern of conduct.”

In late 2024, prosecutors at another Hague-based tribunal, the International Criminal Court, requested an arrest warrant for the head of Myanmar’s military regime for crimes committed against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who seized power from Suu Kyi in 2021, is accused of crimes against humanity for the persecution of the Rohingya. The request is still pending.

FILE - In this Sept. 7, 2017, file photo, smoke rises from a burned house in Gawdu Zara village, northern Rakhine state, where the vast majority of the country's 1.1 million Rohingya lived, Myanmar. (AP Photo, File)