Moldova, Russia to implement joint passport control project

The Moldovan Ministry of Information Development (MID) and Russia’s Ministry of Information Technology and Communication will implement a joint pilot-project for information exchange between the control systems of passports and biometric visas at airport checkpoints. The one-year project will be launched on 1 January 2008 at the Chisinau International Airport and the Domodedovo Airport in Moscow. Corneliu Jaloba, department head at MDI, explained that the project will enable to perform passport data and fingerprint checks against the central databases of the two countries. The goal of the project is to contribute in combating terrorism and transborder crimes. According to MDI data, Russia has issued 100,000 biometric passports so far, while Moldova is to issue 5,000 such passports soon.