Many of the candidates for the post of MP donate to parties more money than they indicate in their income statements, the head of the Investigative Journalism Center Cornelia Cozonac said in a roundtable meeting centering on the transparency of the sources of income and costs of the political parties in the election campaign and instruments for verifying them, Info-Prim Neo reports. “Sometimes we ask ourselves where this money declared to the Central Election Commission comes from and what its purpose is. Sources close to the parties say the money comes from certain economic entities and is shared among particular candidates. It does not seem wrong, but when the party comes to power, it will have to pay debts to these donors,” said Cornelia Cozonac. Analyst Corneliu Ciurea, expert of the Institute for Development and Social Initiative “Viitorul”, stressed that besides large donations, there is also another problem. Being under constraint, the political leaders start to transfer their money to third persons, usually from rural areas, who often do not know what they sign for. Thus, there appear ‘small’ donations of 20, 50 lei or even 80,000 lei. According to another expert of “Viitorul” Sergiu Lipcean, the arguments about the financing of political parties in the election campaign derive from the defective Election Code and the Law on Political Parties. Sergiu Lipcean considers the provision allowing a private individual to donate up to 1.5 million lei to a party and a legal entity – up to 3 million lei is flawed. “In Moldova, the financial resources of the parties can be checked by the Central Election Commission, the Ministry of Justice, the Audit Office and the Tax Inspectorate. But the Commission can monitor the financial activity of the parties only during the election campaign, while the other institutions carry out checks between campaigns. Thus, the situation is ambiguous,” said the expert. In this connection, Corneliu Ciurea said that only the expenses for electoral advertisements on the street, radio and television are checked, but those related to transportation, maintaining of the central and local staffs, rent and other costs that are not declared, but amount to 17 million lei for a large party remain unverified. The experts of the Institute said that the parties can be divided into three groups by the costs they incur – large parties that spend between US$1.5 and 3 million on the campaign, medium parties that spend up to US$1.5 million, and small parties that spend up to US$500,000. In a report that will be published towards the end of the campaign, the Institute will categorize the election contenders according to the three groups.