Chirtoaca says he spent $36 lei of municipal money on U.S. trip

Chisinau Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca says he spent a mere 405 lei ($36) from the city's coffers during his recent visit to the U.S., a trip which apparently troubled the prosecuting authorities. Travel and accommodation expenses, added Chirtoaca, were covered by the organizers. Chirtoaca's explanations came after the Municipal Prosecutor's Office demanded that the mayor account for the expenses related to the trip. In a statement issued on Tuesday, the Chisinau City Hall has expressed its concern with the fact that the municipal prosecutors considered the mayor's visit as a matter falling under criminal law. The City Hall criticized the inquiry by the municipal prosecutors as “an insult to the community, the residents of Chisinau, the local administration, as well as to the U.S., a country which has offered constant and substantial support for Moldova to become a genuine democracy”. “It is obvious that the mayor's visit on May 5-9 to the U.S. – specifically to the John. F. Kennedy School of Government, the Harvard University in Boston, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the State Department, and the White House National Security Council in Washington DC – has nothing to do with what the Prosecutor's Office is qualified to deal with, unless we admit that the (Moldovan) communist authorities could regard Moldova's relationship with the U.S. exactly as they were regarded by the Soviet communist authorities in 1989”, the statement reads. At the same time, the mayor's office expressed its regret that the prosecuting authorities “haven't taken, or communicated of, any visible measures intended to investigate and punish the murders, the instances of torture and ill-treatment that occurred on a large scale in downtown Chisinau and in police stations after April 7, 2009, when people demonstrating peacefully or just passing by were arrested in large numbers”. The City Hall is also asking rhetorically “whether the Prosecutor's Office has ever felt the need to learn about the millions of dollars and euros wasted by the Communist government over the last 8 years, about the privatization deals signed, or about the signing by Vladimir Voronin, as head of state, of a declaration, together with Igor Smirnov and Dmitry Medvedev, whereby the presence of the Russian occupation army is accepted in the Transnistrian region, and about the effects of it”.