Minister of Home Affairs Ana Revenco said that tens of schemes that facilitated the stealing of public money, primarily fraudulent acquisitions, were exposed after she took up her duties. She noted she started by stopping these schemes and by dismissing dishonest employees. Many of the employees of the Ministry voluntarily gave up the job, over 40 resignations of high-ranking officials, including inspectorate chiefs, being already accepted, IPN reports.
Ana Revenco noted that the Ministry included both professionals eager to work and also persons who used the posts to facilitate the running of private businesses through which public funds were stolen.
“Emphasis is now placed on the cleanup – elimination of toxic factors, of noxious practices. We stopped a series of dubious tender contests. The internal audit performed on my instruction revealed multiple fraudulent schemes that favored a series of firms. In time, a number of companies became “native”. It goes to procurement procedures for building services totaling tens of millions of lei, information systems and other IT products, larger or smaller equipment. Each year, tens of millions of lei reached someone’s pockets and this money was paid by the citizens, from the state budget. The price was much higher than the real price that could have been paid,” Ana Revenco stated in the program “In Depth” on PROTV Chisinau channel.
She noted that the Internal Protection and Security Service conducted over 160 internal inquiries featuring employees of the Ministry suspected of acts of corruption and abuse of power. Some of terse go on, while others were completed and resulted in firing. Integrity is one of the three main principles used in the assessment. Some of the employees tendered their resignations.
The minister said the problem of staff is also due to the low salaries. A subofficer is paid less than 5,000 lei a month and the salary is raised to 6,500 lei only after five years of work. The past year, about 7,000 employees with experience of three-five years left the system owing to the low salaries.
