Moldovan Prosecutor General's Office opens criminal file on attempt of state's dispossessing from Odessa Consulate's headquarters

Chisinau, 8 December /MOLDPRES/ - The Prosecutor General’s Office (PG) today informed that it had opened a criminal file for abuse of office, which showed  itself through attempt of dispossessing Moldova from the headquarters of the Consulate from Odessa, Ukraine.   

According to PG’s data, within the criminal file, decision-makers found out that the Government Decision No 142 on switching a real estate asset from the public sector to the private one of the state and signing of an exchange contract was adopted on 27 February 2019.  

Prosecutors say that, in the lack of an anticorruption expertise and without assessing the cost of the real estate provided in exchange, decision-makers accepted the proposals of the working group, set up under a prime minister’s instruction No 36/2018 on the exchange of the real estate placed on the Postmitnogo Street nr.2/2Б, Odessa, Ukraine, owned by Moldova, being under the management of the Foreign Affairs and European Integration Ministry (MAEIE), with the following private property assets - adjacent ground with an area of 0.0397 hectares and capital construction on the purpose of living with an area of 402.2 square metres, with the annexes placed on the Tinysta Street No 6/4-A.    

Although the value of the real estate, where Moldova’s Consulate is placed, is about 450,526 dollars and the right of user over the ground – about 1, 312, 000 dollars, in the lack of the acts which would confirm the title, MAEIE decision-makers, jointly with the working group, contrary to the legal provisions, assuming the role of assessor, arbitrarily established that the price of the real estate placed on the Tinysta Street No 6/4-A is of 520,000 dollars.   

“Among these illegal actions, the concerned decision-makers would have acted in the interests of influential people from Moldova and would have undertaken an attempt of buying up, at a ridiculously low price, the building of Moldova’s Consulate from Odessa and the right of using the adjacent land, through exchange of real estate assets. The price difference was of about 360,000 dollars; the circumstances did not produce their effect for reasons independent of the perpetrators’ will,’’ the PG press release reads.