President Igor Dodon said the largest part of the funds stolen from the Moldovan banking system are now outside the country. Therefore, by the December 4 decision of the Supreme Security Council, the competent bodies were requested to immediately consider the possibility of announcing a contest to choose an international partner that will recover the money transferred overseas, IPN reports.

In a news conference held after the Council’s meeting, President Dodon stated 2.4 billion lei has been recovered so far following the liquidation of the three banks involved in the fraud and assets to the value of 1.2 billion lei were sequestrated. Practically no action was taken until now to recover the stolen funds transferred abroad. An international partner will be selected to deal with this. “This is the international practice. This is the recommendation of the International Monetary Fund,” he said.

Igor Dodon also said that tens of criminal cases were started and some of the persons are wanted, including Vlad Plahotniuc and Ilan Shor. The case against Plahotniuc was started on October 10, 2019 and on October 17 was transmitted from the National Anticorruption Center to the Ministry of the Interior, more exactly to a local cell of Interpol. On October 18, this case and the application to list Plahotniuc wanted internationally was passed on to the General Secretariat of Interpol. All the internal procedures were performed. “As far as we know, the General Secretariat of Interpol hasn’t yet put Mister Plahotniuc on the wanted list,” he stated.

The Supreme Security Council decided to take not only a multilateral approach, but also a bilateral one. The investigation bodies were instructed to directly seek information about the involved persons from the U.S., the UK and Romania. “Why these countries? We took into account the press reports saying these persons could be in the three states,” noted President Dodon.