5.  The applicant was born in 1963 and lives in Chişinău. 6.  At the time of the events the applicant was the head of a private high school (V.) and acting head of the Industrial and Construction College (C., a State-funded institution). In 2004 a criminal investigation was opened into fraudulent acts and abuse of power allegedly committed by the applicant. He was accused of having accepted money from two students for their studies at V. and failing to disclose those payments in the school’s accounts. 7.  On 24 September 2004 the applicant was arrested and remanded in custody on the basis of a warrant issued by the Centru District Court that day. On 30 September 2004 the Chişinău Court of Appeal overturned the lower court’s decision, finding there was no reason to believe that the applicant would abscond or interfere with the investigation, noting that he had a fixed address, a family and an under-age child, and that he had undertaken to appear before the investigation authorities whenever summoned. He was released on the same day. 8.  On 20 November 2006 the Grigoriopol District Court sentenced the applicant to three years’ imprisonment for fraud. He was acquitted of all the other charges mainly owing to a lack of evidence that he had illegally accepted money from the students. On the same day he was arrested and placed in prison no. 13 in Chișinău. 9.  On 8 February 2007 the Chişinău Court of Appeal partly quashed the first-instance court’s judgment. The court found that the applicant had been negligent in admitting two new students to V. and accepting tuition fees from them, even though by order of 25 December 2003, the Ministry of Education had suspended V’s licence and the applicant had been ordered to transfer all pupils to other educational institutions. The applicant was thus convicted under Article 329 (1) of the Criminal Code (see paragraph 19 below) and his custodial sentence was reduced by the appellate court to eight months. 10.  In an appeal on points of law, the applicant argued that he could not be convicted of a violation of Article 329 (1) of the Criminal Code (see paragraph 19 below) because two elements of the crime set out therein had not been met, namely that it had to have been committed by a “public official” and that the damage caused as a result had to be “large-scale”. Firstly, the conviction had been based on his alleged wrongdoing as head of V. As the head of a private institution, he could not be considered a public official (persoană cu funcţii de răspundere), a notion expressly defined in Article 123 of the Criminal Code (see paragraph 19 below). He could not therefore be accused of negligence in carrying out any official duties by accepting pupils to study in his private school.
Secondly, the value of the alleged damage caused (3,020 Moldovan lei (MDL)) was less than the minimum MDL 10,000 required under Article 329 for large-scale damage, as defined in Articles 64 and 126 of the Criminal Code (see paragraph 19 below).
Finally, the applicant argued that he had admitted new pupils to his school because he had challenged the Ministry of Justice’s order of 25 December 2003 in court, which in his opinion meant that the order had been suspended and thus had no legal effect pending the outcome of the litigation. 11.  On 28 June 2007 the Supreme Court of Justice partly quashed the lower court’s judgment. The court dealt with the applicant’s arguments raised in his appeal on points of law as follows:
“As concerns [the applicant’s] arguments that he must be acquitted under Article 329 (1) of the Criminal Code because the elements of the crime were not present in his actions, these [arguments] are unsubstantiated and are contradicted by the material evidence; the accused’s refusal to admit liability should not necessarily lead to his acquittal since there is pertinent and conclusive evidence which corroborates as a whole and proves with certainty his guilt in having committed the crime: contract no. ... of enrolling S.N. as a student ... concluded between L.G. and the head of [V.]; receipts for [cashing of] MDL 2,000 lei on 30 August 2004 and of MDL 1,000 and MDL 20 on 6 July 2004; [Ministry of Education] order of 25 December 2003 suspending the activity of the private education institutions founded by [V.].”
The court noted, however, that the lower courts had not taken into consideration the applicant’s mitigating circumstances, such as the fact that he had no previous convictions and was well regarded in society. In the absence of any aggravating circumstances, the lower courts had incorrectly decided to imprison him. The court therefore ordered the applicant to pay a fine instead of giving him a custodial sentence. He was therefore released on the same day, after approximately seven months of detention in prison no. 13. Taking into account the fact that he had already served time in prison, he was dispensed from paying the fine. 12.  The applicant described the conditions in which he had been held for more than seven months in Chişinău Prison no. 13. The prison was situated in a 165-year-old building. He was detained in a cell measuring 26 square metres which he shared with between eleven and fourteen other detainees. The cell was unventilated, the only air coming in from several holes in a net covering the window. The cell was very cold in winter and very hot in summer, the walls and ceiling were damp and the toilet was not separated from the rest of the cell. During the first five months of detention, the applicant was not issued with any bedding and had to sleep on a bare mattress. When bedding was finally provided, it was changed very rarely. The cell was never cleaned; his mattress was full of parasitic insects and he could not sleep as a result. The light was too weak in the cell for reading. Showers were only allowed once a week and the shower day did not coincide with the day of the week when fresh bedding was issued, which meant the continuous presence of parasitic insects. Food was inadequate and of poor quality; the portions did not conform to the standard decided upon by the Government, particularly in respect of meat, fish, eggs and dairy products. 13.  The applicant made a total of forty-four complaints to various authorities about the conditions of his detention. He asked, inter alia, for the number of persons in cell no. 75 (in which he was being detained) to be reduced to no more than eight detainees instead of the fourteen who were held there at the time of making the complaint, so as to observe the statutory minimum requirement of 4 square metres of living space per detainee. The applicant also asked for an additional hour of exercise time for all the detainees in his cell in an attempt to improve the overcrowding situation. The applicant made six complaints between 19 March and 15 May 2007 about the lack of ventilation and access to fresh air aggravating the overcrowding. On 25 March 2007 he asked to be transferred to a non-smoking cell because he was subjected to passive smoking, which he argued was “a far more serious punishment than the eight months of imprisonment to which [he] had been sentenced”. On 3 May 2007 he complained about the failure to provide adequate food as required by the relevant Government decisions, claiming, inter alia, that reduced quantities of sugar and bread had been distributed to detainees in his cell. The applicant asked for portion sizes to be checked periodically to ensure they were meeting the statutory minimum. On four occasions between 30 March and 28 May 2007 the applicant complained about the presence of parasitic insects and asked for fresh bedding to coincide with shower day so as to avoid the risk of continued infestation. On 12 May 2007 the applicant asked for various materials in order to carry out repairs to their cell (together with his cell mates), as the ceiling was dark and the paint was peeling off the walls. 14.  The applicant received a total of five letters in response, informing him that he would only be transferred to another category of prison following the final determination of his criminal case. The responses, however, failed to address the majority of his complaints. The applicant stated that on 17 May 2007, after repeatedly complaining about the unventilated space, a window was opened in the corridor opposite his cell, providing more fresh air. On 7 June 2007, in reply to his request to be allowed to use the prison library’s reading room, he was informed by the relevant authorities that prison no. 13 had no such facility. 15.  On 19 February and 26 March 2007 the applicant complained that he was being detained in a closed prison, despite having been sentenced to detention in a semi-open prison where, he submitted, he would have had a right to move freely within the prison area (as opposed to having one hour of exercise time in the closed prison). 16.  On 2 July 2007 the prison doctor examined the applicant and informed him that he had been exposed to the risk of contracting tuberculosis. The doctor referred the applicant to a consultant and an eyesight specialist.