Lilia Munteanu, the privatizer and first owner of Guguță café in Chisinau’s Central Park, said she still hasn’t been paid in full after selling it.

During a talk show on Jurnal TV, the woman said she bought the café for 5.6 million lei from the state, and soon had to sell it for 5.7 million, but only received $30,000, or slightly more than 0.5 million lei in today’s money. 

Lilia Munteanu says she was pressured into selling the property – she had been briefly arrested in 2017 and is still prosecuted in some “fabricated” criminal cases – because the former Democratic Party leader Vladimir Plahotniuc was so keen to have it.

“After the café was taken from me, I tried to reach out to him and tell him that the property was stolen from me, as I never got paid. But never received at least an audience.”

Lilia Munteanu says that shortly after she sold the café – to people who went on to become involved in the $1B bank fraud – the property was used as collateral to take out a 2 million euros loan from the now bankrupt Banca de Economii. Then, according to the woman, the café was sold by the bank to Finpar Invest, a company mentioned in the Kroll report and affiliated with Plahotniuc.