Lawyer Victor Pantaru said a raider attack was staged on the English company Capital City Service Limited (CCS) with the assistance of the law enforcement agencies of Moldova. According to him, action was taken to exert pressure on persons to force them make the wanted statements or to yield property or businesses.
In a news conference at IPN, Victor Pantaru said the business was started by Moldovan national Alexandru Tarakanov in 1996 by founding Capital City Service Corp in Ireland. After 2000, Tarakanov, together with another two persons, Sergiu Savochkin and Dimitryi Shvidki, initiated a discussion about the prospects of starting a common business in telecommunications. The agreement was that each of them would equally invest money and time, while the stocks would be equal in value. Ultimately, both Savochkin and Shvidki made no financial contribution, with the latter giving up to become involved. At the same time, Tarakanov invested both money and time.
In March 2003, there was founded Capital City Service Limited, which inherited the activity of the Irish company founded by Tarakanov alone. In November 2006, there was opened the representative office of CCS in Moldova and this was managed by Savochkin. In 2007, under a false pretext, this managed to obtain 50% of the share capital of the English company from Tarakanov. Even if Savochkin invested nothing in the company’s share capital, he got a 50% holding, while his wife was named fully-fledged director and secretary of CCS. In reality, the woman didn’t work at the company and her husband Sergiu Savochkin was the one who decided and acted in her name.
According to Victor Pantaru, in 2007 Savochkin started to act to the detriment of the company. Since the company was registered, he hadn’t contributed to this and was thus offered to redistribute the stocks in the ratio of 20:80 in favor of Tarakanov, who really invested in the business. Savochkin rejected the proposal. Seven years later, he moved to live in Moscow, abandoning the company, but didn’t renounce his shareholding in the company for the simple reason that this yielded profit.
In the autumn of 2016, Alexandru Tarakanov found out that Savochkin tried to sell his holding in the English company and most probably reached particular agreements with the buyer, whom he presented to Tarakanov as a potential investor. When he found out who the potential investor was, Tarakanov refused to do business with this, owing to press reports about his hostile business appropriation actions. In January 2017, Savochkin filed a lawsuit against Tarakanov and the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office the next day started a criminal case.
Searches and arrests followed and the arrested persons were told that if they make statements, they will be able to go home. Otherwise, they will not be released. Without having an accounting or audit report on the company and without having a complaint about embezzlement from the company, four persons were arrested. There were issued warrants for the arrest of Alexandru Tarakanov and Mihail Ivanov, who are not in Moldova.
“We do not expect that the law enforcement bodies will put things right and will drop charges given that this is a civil dispute between two associates, but we should inform the public about the reasons and the way in which the law enforcement agencies work,” said Victor Pantaru, adding that the British and U.S. Embassies and the EU Delegation to Moldova were informed about this case and applications will be submitted to the ECHR over the arrests.
