Eleventh employees of the Municipal Public Health Center of Chisinau were arrested by officers of the National Anticorruption Center on suspicion of acts of corruption. The arrests were made as part of an investigation opened in May 2018, IPN reports.

In a press release, the National Anticorruption Center said that 25 persons are now being investigated as suspects, but only 11 were arrested. The employees of the Municipal Public Health Center are suspected of periodically asking for and taking money personally or by intermediaries from private individuals and legal entities for a series of services. Sanitary inspectors and managers of the Center took payoffs for issuing sanitary certificates and authorizations and for not performing particular insertions or for not indicating the irregularities identified during surprise visits.

It was also established that some of the inspectors wrote fictitious petitions concerning irregularities and then summoned businessmen to the Center and told them to pay money if they wanted to avoid inspections at the scene and fines. The asked amounts varied between 1,000 lei and several thousand lei for a service.

The anticorruption officers started over 100 criminal cases over passive and active corruption. The prosecution is managed by the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office.