The tender contest to lease out commercial spaces at the Chisinau International Airport was canceled due to irregularities detected in the process of launching and conducting the contest, said Minister of Infrastructure and Regional Development Andrei Spînu. According to him, the scandal around the tender contest is generated by the “Shor criminal group” that now manages the commercial spaces inside the Airport and that will lose billions in revenues, IPN reports.
The minister said that the state decided to lease out the commercial spaces at the Airport because they are now managed by companies affiliated to fugitive Ilan Shor. The government decided to exclude the Shor group from any commercial activity on the territory of Moldova.
“The spaces that will be leased out are managed by two companies - Aero Food SRL whose administrator is Bublyi Liubovi, who also appears as a donor to the Shor Party, and Dufremol, which we all know has the same criminal group behind it. In total, these two companies that manage the spaces make 1 billion lei incomes. All this panic around the auction is happening because this criminal group will lose control of the spaces and will lose the revenue. We clearly noted that this criminal group must be removed from any business sector in our country,” Andrei Spînu stated in the talk show “Secrets of the Power” on JurnalTV channel.
The official said the tender contest to lease out commercial spaces at the Airport was canceled due to the small number of companies that registered for the competition and because of illegalities identified in the process of launching and conducting the contest.
“The tender contest itself was handled by the state-owned enterprise Chisinau International Airport, not by the Ministry of Infrastructure, not by the Public Property Agency. The PPA only monitored a part of this process. The tender contest was nullified for two reasons. First, we only had two companies that applied and we don’t think this is enough for competition. Two, shortcomings were identified in the procedures for launching and holding the contest. The working group within the Chisinau International Airport is responsible for the process. One person resigned from the group. We need to see why. One more person resigned before the Airport’s administrator vacated his seat. That person worked directly on this procedure,” said the Minister of Infrastructure and Regional Development.
The tender contest to lease out commercial spaces at the Airport involved Lagardere Travel Retail and Le Brige. The director of the Public Property Agency Roman Cojuhari announced that the tender contest was canalled and will be resumed after all the identified irregularities are removed.
