The director of the Public Services Agency (PSA) explained why the cost of making a passport didn’t decline after the scheme concerning blank IDs was revealed. According to Mircea Eșanu, even if the case was sent to the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, the investigation remains stagnant, while the contract with the foreign company hasn’t been annulled. Even if money is not transferred to the company in Bulgaria, the price at which documents are made will not be decreased until it is proven in court that it is a scheme to appropriate public funds, IPN reports.
Since he took up his duties last summer, the PSA director exposed the fraudulent scheme implemented at the institution, by which each citizen was made to pay an additional sum for being issued with a passport. The applicants paid a kind of “royalty” tax of over €13. Under the former administration of the PSA, the money was transferred to a foreign company that dealt with the “printing” of documents. Mircea Eșanu said that even if he provided the Prosecutor’s Office with documents that confirm the presence of a scheme, there is no end result in this case.
“An additional tax of €13.5-14 was charged for issuing a passport. This case is handled by the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, but I do not see any move in it. I’m concerned about this break as, for now, only we are sure that this is a fraud. It should be proven. The PSA has to now pay this money. This is a private printing company, as the national publishing houses are in Romania or Ukraine,” Mircea Eșanu stated in the program “Black Box” on TV8 channel.
He noted that as long as this contract is not annulled by court, the Agency cannot reduce the price of passports. However, the money is not transferred to that company in Bulgaria, but remains in the budget of the PSA.
“We cleared the Agency’s debts to three banks and all the other debts. The PSA does not owe any money to banks now. When I took over, the PSA had debts of 180 million lei. I can presume that the money collected by this scheme was also use to finance parties and election campaigns,” said Mircea Eșanu.
According to him, since 2014, when the scheme started to be implemented, over €40 million of the money collected from people who applied for IDs reached the accounts of the foreign company.
