CHISINAU (Reuters) - Moldova’s justice minister resigned on Monday after a leaked telephone conversation appeared to show him chatting in 2015 with a man later convicted of what is known in the country as the “theft of the century”.

Jurnal TV broadcast the conversation between Alexandru Tanase and businessman Veaceslav Platon, who is serving a jail sentence for money-laundering and fraud linked to the disappearance of $1 billion from Moldova’s banking system.

In the recording, Platon asks Tanase, who was then head of the Constitutional Court, why no progress had been made with the investigation into the fraud.