Moldovan PM asks to carry out financial, technical revision within Chisinau National Arena project

Chisinau, 10 July /MOLDPRES/ - Prime Minister Maia Sandu, in the beginning of  a today’s cabinet meeting, asked the Education, Culture and Research Ministry to make a petition to the Finance Ministry and Economics and Infrastructure Ministry, in order to carry out a financial and technical revision within the Chisinau National Arena project. Subsequently, law-enforcement bodies will investigate the people involved in the implementation of this project. The PM informed that, following the analyses carried out, the way of assessing the project’s costs was not clear, the government’s communication and protocol department has reported.        

,,This project was thought out as a scheme which is to eventually lead to the taking over by certain interest groups of the asset and of the ground allocated for this project. An impression is created that the sum of 43 million euros, evaluated for this project, was taken from nowhere. Justifying documents for clearing up how they got to this sum have not been found, at least so far. During time, things have changed and now the cost of this project is of 44.5 million euros. The risks, in this case, are obviously that the real cost is lower than what the state is spending for this project,” the prime minister said.   

Also, the PM noted that the ground allocated for the National Arena represented 69.2 hectares, in the situation when the concerned construction occupied only ten hectares. Maia Sandu specified that the state had lost 90 million lei alone from non-inclusion in the project of the costs for changing the ground’s purpose from the agricultural field into a ground for constructions. At the same time, Maia Sandu also said that the there were questions as to the synchronization of the operations of signing and publication in the Official Journal of the law which allowed this contract to be signed. In the context, the law established that the object National Arena can be taken over by the private partner to offset the debts. Also, under the contract, Arena’s guarantee term is of only one year.    

At the meeting, Maia Sandu also said that, during 2015-2019, the value of the goods imported by the duty-free entities had stood at 2.8 billion lei and 75 per cent of the goods sold were illegally imported to Moldova. The PM noted that the document on the fiscal evasions, unlawful acts and abuses found out in the work of the duty-free shops would be made public.   

At the same time, Maia Sandu reiterated that the public sector employees trying to abuse the public money would be sanctioned.