Vasile Tarlev: Relevant bodies deal with the businesses of agricultural leaders

“The relevant bodies deal with the businesses of certain agricultural leaders that bought luxurious cars but did not pay the rent for farmland,” Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev said at the last meeting of the Commission for Emergency Situations. The Premier said that he possesses information about the number of leaders in agriculture that bought cars from the most select show rooms in Chisinau in the first seven months of 2007, after they had sold cereals from the last year’s crop at very high prices this year. Tarlev gave as example the case of an economic agent that leases 1 600 hectares of land. This year he sold the corn for 4 lei per kilogram, as against 0.55 lei last year, and bought a new Mercedes. The Premier also said that according to his sources, some of the agricultural leaders did not declare the real quantities of wheat they harvested this year and do not pay the rent for the land, though they had a good wheat yield. He asked the State Main Fiscal Inspectorate to assess the actual quantities of wheat harvested this year, as the data presented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry could be incorrect. “We do not want to take their wheat; we want only transparency in this process and an adequate behaviour when paying the debts to land leasers,” the Premier said, quoted by Info-Prim Neo. Earlier, Vasile Tarlev expressed his dissatisfaction with the fact that the national agricultural producers store the wheat and do not want to sell it for the state reserve, though, as he said, the Government offered a good price for it.