National Anticorruption Centre says money provided to Moldova to build border checkpoints used inefficiently

Chisinau, 23 September /MOLDPRES/ - Money provided to Moldova by the World Bank within a project on the construction of border checkpoints has been used inefficiently, according to a study conducted by the National Anticorruption Centre.    

The study was carried out based on the implementation of Moldova Agriculture Competitiveness project (construction of Border Inspection Points (BIP)) by the Consolidated Unit for Implementing and Monitoring Projects (UCIMP) in the agriculture sector and the National Food Safety Agency (ANSA).    

According to the CNA press service, despite the fact that these projects were launched three years ago, with substantial crediting means spent to this end, they have not been implemented so far, with premises created for compromising the concerned project and bringing damage to the state.

In this respect, experts found out mistakes in case of a tender on works for the construction of BIP Leuseni, with task notebooks compiled with deficiencies and which contained unreal terms of the contract’s carrying out. “At the same time, as a result of the procrastination of the concerned project’s implementation, the value of the contract on reconstruction increased from 11.5 million lei (the lowest bid from the first stage of the tender) to 26.6 million lei (winner bid),” the Anticorruption Centre experts said.

At the same time, in cases of BIP Tudora and BIP Criva, the reconstruction works took place with the procrastination of the term, given that ANSA, as beneficiary of the concerned inspection points, failed to take needed measures to get the necessary coordinations and authorizations. “As a result, none of the contracts on construction of BIPs, the beneficiary of which is ANSA, have been carried out in the term set, and their completion was significantly, deliberately procrastinated,” CNA experts noted.  

Also, in case of the tenders on the working out of two information systems (MMSV and LIMS) in the sanitary and veterinary sector, CNA experts found out situations of conflicts of interests between the winner company Romanian Soft Company and one of the members of the tender commission. Despite the fact that the information systems MMSV and LIMS, subsequently elaborated, underwent all certificates of conformity, ANSA refused to take them onto the books and implement them, invoking their non-functionality, lack of the expected result and of a platform for operating software products. While ANSA was dragging the systems’ implementation, 75 per cent of the guarantee and maintenance period had already expired at that phase, with the period ensured by the provider of the information systems, in line with the contractual obligations.      

Contacted by MOLDPRES, the head of the CNA strategic analysis department, Ion Nastas, said that “CNA informed Prime Minister Pavel Filip about the findings of the study and notified the Agriculture and Food Industry Ministry to undertake needed measures in order to remove the infringements discovered, as well as to ensure an efficient implementation of the project. At the same time, the CNA subdivisions were urged to carry out verifications on the lawfulness of the actions by ANSA and UCIMP,” Nastas said.    

(Reporter A. Plitoc, editor A. Raileanu)