Moldovan prosecutors demand suspension of Transport and Road Infrastructure Minister from office

Chisinau, 2 May /MOLDPRES/- Prosecutors today sent to the government a petition demanding the suspension from office of Transport and Road Infrastructure Minister Iurie Chirinciuc.

At the end of last week, the official was detained for 30 days, suspected of passive corruption, illegal extraction of minerals and abuse of power in order to build a road. The Transport and Road Infrastructure Minister, acting director-general of the State Road Administration and heads of two construction companies were detained by the National Anticorruption Centre (CNA) officers and prosecutors on 27 April, suspected of organizing a criminal scheme to acquire financial means in especially large proportions.

Also, CNA announced it conducted 12 searches in a passive corruption file with involvement of customs brokers, employees of the Internal Customs Service no 3 of the Chisinau customs office.

CNA spokeswoman Angela Starinschi said that searches were taking place at this time. Several brokers and economic agents are suspected of having been involved in a scheme of systematically collecting from the representatives of economic agents a protection fee to speed up customs procedures, fail to carry out the physical verification of imported goods or to assign erroneous tariff headings to the classification of declared goods, favorable to importers.

 (Reporter A. Zara, editor A. Răileanu)