Natalia Morar

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Natalia Morar (Russian: Наталья Морарь) is a Moldovan investigative journalist for the Russian magazine New Times. She was a permanent resident^[1] of Russia until she was expelled in December 2007, assumably for exposing corruption in Russia.^[1]^[2] Born in the Moldavian SSR, she moved to Russia in 2002 to study sociology at the Moscow State University, which she graduated in 2007. Morar applied for Russian citizenship, which she was supposed to get in April 2008.^[3]

1 Investigations
2 Expulsion from Russia
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Investigations

In May 2007 Morar broke open the story about a money laundering case involving Austria's Raiffeisen Zentralbank and several top Putin's administration officials, including FSB Deputy Head Alexander Bortnikov.^[4] According to her, top Russian Central Bank official Andrei Kozlov had been murdered for pursuing those leads and revoking the license from the impicated Diskont bank.^[5]

In mid-December 2007, Morar published an article "The black cash of the Kremlin" in which she described how a vast illegal political fund was used to keep all major political parties in Russia dependent on the central authorities during the 2007 Russian legislative election.

[edit] Expulsion from Russia

After her article on political funding, Natalia Morar was expelled from Russia the orders of Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. The International Federation of Journalists called on the European bodies to investigate the case.^[6] Russia's Union of Journalists also condemned the deportation.^[7] According to Wall Street Journal, she was deported for exposing secrets of the FSB:

"Ms. Morar had written extensively about alleged corruption in Russia's security services, some of which she said had been leaking incriminating information about their rivals in a power struggle between the groups. This fall, she wrote about a corruption investigation into kickback and extortion allegations against some top officials of the FSB federal security service, the successor agency to the KGB."^[8]

A number of journalists has spoken out on account of Natalia Morar case. As put by a popular journalist Oleg Kashin in magazine Russian Life:

"Yet a year ago that wasn't the place, and today one can speak about the tendency — movements of unreliable people are not only traced — now law enforcement bodies allow themselves to mess with these movements, deciding without any court statements who can move somewhere, and who should be dealt with... Straight-arrows aren't to bother. At least, straight-arrows themselves are assured in that. They will be sure in that for long — till the very bell in the night when it'll be nobody to call for help. Of course, that sounds much of operetta-style, but the problem really exists and it must be managed."[1]

In February 2008, she married in Moldova a Russian colleague in an attempt to get around the ban, but when she arrived in Moscow, she was not allowed to leave the airport, spending three days in the transit area before returning to Chişinău.^[9]^[10]

In March 2008, Morar announced that she decided to complain to the European Court of Human Rights that several human rights from the European Convention on Human Rights have been violated: that a family (she and her husband) cannot be separated and not being given water and food during the days she stayed at the Domodedovo airport and for not being notified of the reasion why she was refused entry the second time.^[10]