In 2010-2019, the state-run enterprise Moldova’s Railways was dispossessed of assets by different methods, such as the purchase of spare parts and diesel fuel at exaggerated prices, stealing of diesel fuel and appropriation of land and even pieces of platforms. These are some of the preliminary conclusions of the parliamentary commission that was created to analyze the economic-financial situation at the enterprise and the activity of the railway transport sector in 2010-2020, IPN reports.
In a news conference, Socialist MP Oleg Lipskii, who is the commission’s head, said that in 20 days of the creation of the commission, they received responses from a number of state institutions. The response provided by the National Anticorruption Center shows that a series of criminal cases were started during ten years, but no one was held accountable. The responses and the questioning of representatives of the Security and Intelligence Service show that the responsible ministry, the Government and the Public Property Agency had been informed about the real situation at the enterprise in the period.
Oleg Lipskii noted the modernization of trains at a factory in Romania took place in the absence of a feasibility study and no one knows how much these works cost in reality. Of the five modernized trains, only two are functional, while the rest are defective.
According to the MP, the most serious is the fact that the schemes implemented in 2015-2019 resulted in large sums of money being extracted from the enterprise. Consequently, a large volume of freight transiting Moldova was lost. The clients migrated to the naval transport sector. The COVID-19 pandemic was the last blow to the enterprise. As a result, its amount of work in 2019 declined by 33% compared with 2020. More details about the commission’s conclusions will be incorporated into the report that will be presented in Parliament.
In a positing on Facebook, PPPDA MP Alexandru Slusari said that after representatives of the Security and Intelligence Service were questioned by the commission, he convinced himself that the only solution to save the enterprise is for the Government to declare Moldova’s Railways a strategic facility subordinated directly to the executive, without the participation of the Public Property Agency. “An anti-crisis plan should be immediately designed to remedy the situation at the enterprise or Moldova’s Railways risks going bankrupt in several months,” stated Slusari.
