The prosecutors instituted criminal proceedings for abuse of power in the attempt to dispossess the Republic of Moldova of the building of the Consulate situated in Odessa, Ukraine. It was determined that on February 27, 2019, there was adopted a Government decision on the transfer of a publicly owned building under the private ownership of the state, with an exchange contract being signed, IPN reports.

The Prosecutor General’s Office said that in the absence of an anticorruption assessment and without evaluating the cost of the building offered instead, it was accepted the proposal of the working group set up by order No. 36/2018 of the Prime Minister (Pavel Filip, e.n.) to exchange the building located at 2/2Б Postmitnogo St in Odessa, which was managed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration, for the following privately owned property – a lot that is 0.0397 ha and the residential building that is 402.2 m2 in area, with annexes, situated at 6/4-A Tinysta St in Odessa.

Even if the value of the building of Moldova’s Consulate is of over US$450,000, while the rent for the lot is of over US$1.3 million, in the absence of documents that would confirm the ownership right, decision makers of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in concert with the working group, in breach of the law, assuming the role of evaluators, arbitrarily decided that the price of the building located at 6/4-A Tinysta St is of US$520,000.

According to the prosecutors, the decision makers acted in the interests of influential persons from Moldova and attempted to appropriate the building of Moldova’s Consulate in Odessa and the right to use the adjoining lot at a derisory price, by exchanging buildings, the price difference being of about US$360,000.