The representatives of the government behave like real thieves and steal from the citizens of the Republic of Moldova. Some 20 billion lei on average is stolen from the state budget each year, said Piotr Guțul, chairman of the National Public Association “Consumer Protection”. In a news conference at IPN, Piotr Guțul said the Association made multiple approaches to state officials over thefts from the 2000 and 2011 state budgets, but the made requests were ignored or the provided responses were formal.

In 2000, the Association investigated how the law on the entrepreneur’s patent is being implemented and learned that 4 billion lei failed to be collected into the budget annually. In 11 years, they investigated another case. “In 2011, we received an answer from the Chamber of Commerce concerning the case involving Termoelectrica. We asked for data for three years and received a response covering only two years. They told us that 1.6 billion lei was stolen from the state budget during two years. The authorities are inactive, but we vote for them. We asked to set up a commission to investigate the case of Termoelectrica and, evidently, we didn’t receive a response to this request. Consequently, we reached the conclusion that some thieves left and others came,” said the Association’s chairman.

Petru Guțul underlined the necessity of amending the law on consumer protection. The Association submitted a statement to representatives of the European Union, informing that the law on consumer protection is outdated and does not protect the consumer. They haven’t received an answer so far.

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