Nineteen persons detained for embezzlement from financings of Moldova's Energy Efficiency Fund

Chisinau, 11 April /MOLDPRES/ - Nineteen mayors, heads of companies and headmasters of lyceums today were detained for 72 hours by officers of the National Anticorruption Centre (CNA) and anticorruption prosecutors for faking public tenders and embezzlements from financings of the Energy Efficiency Funds.    

CNA spokeswoman Angela Starinschi has told MOLDPRES that, among the detained people, there were three mayors, the accountant of a mayoralty, five headmasters of gymnasiums and one deputy headmaster of lyceum, as well as heads and employees of nine companies. “They are suspected of organization, by co-participation, of dubious tenders, held within investment projects, with the goal to favour some economic agents,” Starinschi noted.      

According to prosecutors and criminal investigation officers, representatives of the leadership of the Energy Efficiency Fund would have acted in complicity with economic agents, representatives of local public authorities, local councilors and heads of education institutions, in order to organize schemes, through which particularly large sums of money was re-directed to companies promoted by the persons involved in this offence. It is about the purchasing of works for optimizing the consumption of energy, thermal insulation, repairs and capital constructions worth over 28 million lei.    

The law enforcers opened 12 criminal files in all for passive corruption, influence peddling, abuse of office and abuse of power. Over 60 searches were carried out today, in order to strengthen evidence, with prosecution actions taking place at one of the directorates of the Economics Ministry, as well as at the Energy Efficiency Fund.  

Those 19 suspects were placed at the CNA’s isolation ward and at one of the isolation wards of the Police. If found guilty, the detained persons run the risk of being sentenced to up to 15 years of imprisonment, with fines and deprivation from the right to hold certain offices for various periods of time.  

(Reporter A. Plitoc, editor M. Jantovan)