He is a law graduate from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in the city of Iasi, Romania. It was in Iasi where he embraced a business career. During the period 1994-1998, Vladimir Filat acted as the managing director of RoMold Trading SRL and chairman of the board at Dosoftei SA. Upon his return to Moldova Mr. Filat took over as the head of the Privatization and Public Property Department. He also worked for eight months as the state minister in the government led by reformer Ion Sturza, before returning to business. In 2005 he earned a seat in the parliament on behalf of the Democratic Party (PDM), which he defected two years later to found the Moldovan Liberal Democratic Party (PLDM) and take over its chairmanship.

In the 2009 elections he returned to the parliament on a ticket from PLDM. In September the same year he accepted to form a new government. Mr. Filat was sacked from the post of prime minister three years and six months later. In his CV on his personal website, the ex-premier claimed that his removal from office was “the outcome of a political crisis” which had been amplified by a hunting party in Padurea Domneasca reservation - with judges and prosecutors alike, including the prosecutor-general taking part - where a young businessman from the capital was killed by imprudence.

In fact, the Filat government fell in a no-confidence motion in the parliament for “turning into a corrupt, captive, blackmailed [body] that acted against the national interests.” The event generated a political precedent for Moldova when the Constitutional Court issued a resolution stating that a prime minister losing his office for charges of corruption shouldn’t be ever allowed to seek a new mandate.

In the November 2014 elections Vladimir Filat returned in the parliament but on 15 October he got stripped off his immunity at the request of then Prosecutor-General Corneliu Gurin. The same day, he was handcuffed by police and taken into custody. Prosecutors charged him with accepting 250 million US dollars in bribes from a controversial businessman, Ilan Șor, in return for favors while Mr. Filat had still acted as the prime minister.

After a long trial behind closed doors and detention in Penitentiary #13 in Chisinau, on June 2016 the politician was pronounced guilty by the Buiucani District Court and sentenced to nine years in prison. In addition, he was slapped a 60,000-lei fine, stripped of the Order of the Republic, and banned from working in top public posts for five years. In an unprecedented move, the low court also ordered the confiscation of his assets worth more than 795 million lei including luxury cars, residences, land, and shares in a number of companies.

Mr. Filat lost consequently in the Court of Appeal and in the Supreme Court of Justice, his last chance being exhausted in December 2017.

In the meanwhile Mr. Filat’s first spouse Sanda Filat (who took back the name Divircean, asked the court to partition the politician’s properties and give her a share. It was happening in May 2016, four years after the official divorce and one month before the Buiucani District Court issued the sentence and confiscated those properties.

Surprisingly, Mrs. Divircean - ex-Filat convinced the judges to pass a number of properties to her, among them a residence, two garages, and a smaller building, all totaling almost 270 square meters, plus the terrain around this complex - all estimated in official books at 4.6 million lei. The authorities then pleased her claims for a part of Mr. Filat’s properties in spite of the confiscation decision already in effect since October 2015, just days after the politician’s arrest.

And there’s even more: Sanda Divircean successfully appropriated 48% of shares in Kapital Invest Company SA, a Romania-based business from which Mr. Filat earned more than 25 million lei as dividends in 2012-2015. Before the partition of properties, the former Mrs. Filat had owned just 0.48% of shares in that firm.

During his detention, Vladimir Filat had twice filed complaints with the European Court of Human Rights. One in 2015, citing the violation of the detention conditions and the illegal arrest, and another in 2017, citing the violation of his rights to a fair trial, to privacy and family life, to an effective remedy, and to free ballot casting.

In March 2019, the Strasbourg-based court turned down Mr. Filat’s complaint about his detention conditions and suggested the politician to seek a compensating remedy from the national justice system; enforced in January 2019, the compensating remedy mechanism allows Moldovan inmates to seek curtailment of the term.

Mr. Filat used the mechanism and on 30 July 2019 the Ciocana District Court in the capital cut his sentence by three days from every ten days he had spent behind bars. The former prime minister thus gained one year, 11 months and 10 days less to serve in detention. He was due to spend nine years in prison.

After a four-year and nine-month imprisonment, Vladimir Filat was released on parole in December 2019, a procedure that require inmates to serve at least two thirds of the punishment. Amid growing public controversies, the management of Penitentiary #13 appealed against the ruling of the Chisinau Court of Appeal to release the politician. The Appeal magistrates however rejected the appeal on 29 January 2020 and let Mr. Filat walk free.

His problems though are not over yet. Vladimir Filat is still under criminal investigation for money laundering in very large proportions, according to official accounts.

In August 2020, during the ninth extraordinary congress of PLDM, Vladimir Filat was re-elected as president of the party he founded 13 years ago.

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