The concessionaire of the Chisinau International Airport was selected without respecting transparency and the mechanisms for safeguarding the state interests. The process took place with serious and profound deviations and the investigation bodies should focus on this risky concession, MP Igor Munteanu, chairman of the Parliament’s commission on public finance control, stated after the examination of the Court of Auditors’ audit report on the signing and implementation of the contract for the concession of the airport, IPN reports.

According to the MP, the concessionaire Avia Invest obtained about 1.2 billion lei from the modernization tax alone. Even if the Chisinau International Airport in 2017 had a flow of 2.6 million passengers, the concessionaire didn’t make at least 50% of the investments that it was obliged to make at the first stage. The second stage was to start in 2017, but didn’t.

Igor Munteanu said that 90% of all the works performed by Avia Invest were financed with the proceeds from the airport tax and the rest with money coming from offshore areas that are in the focus of the Money Laundering Prevention and Combating Service. The concessionaire used anti-competition and monopole practices in relation to air operators, lending money collected as airport taxes to third companies in a discretionary way.

According to the commission’s chairman, the contract for the concession of the airport is unclear, full of ambiguities and does not respect the state interest protection mechanisms.

The operations and management of the Chisinau International Airport were transferred to Avia Invest in November 2013 under a public-private partnership contract valid for 49 years. The concessionaire pledged to invest €250 million in the modernization of the airport.