After employees of the Public Property Agency (PPA) appeared at LLC “Gările Auto Moderne” on August 19 to forcibly take over the assets managed by the company, on Tuesday employees of the state-owned enterprise “Real Estate Exploitation Division” forcibly entered the head office of the administration. The police also came to the scene and the private guards were removed from the entrance. Representatives of “Gările Auto Moderne”, who were not allowed to enter the building, said that this was an unprecedented abuse, IPN reports.
“Today we witnessed an abuse, I believe an unprecedented one, by employees of the state-owned enterprise “Real Estate Exploitation Division”. This abuse was committed not without the help of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, on whose instructions the guards who ensured the security of the offices were removed from the entrance to the administration’s head office. Respectively, the representatives of the Division entered the headquarters of the administration, the offices, where there were employees’ personal belongings. We were not allowed to participate in this procedure,” said Andrei Iosip, of LLC “Gările Auto Moderne”.
According to him, the access to the head office was not permitted by the company’s representatives on the grounds that there are a series of proceedings pending before courts of law, regarding the suspension of the execution of documents issued by the Public Property Agency in order to take over the complex “Gărilor Auto Moderne”. “The private partner has invested the huge amount of 17 million lei in the modernization and efficiency of the complex. And without any reimbursement procedures being initiated, the PPA unilaterally and illegally terminated the public-private partnership contract, despite the legal proceedings,” stated Andrei Iosip.
In December 2018, the state signed a 25-year bus station concession contract with “Gările Auto Moderne”. Under the contract, the private partner undertook to modernize 30 bus stations and terminals within three years. In August 2022, the contract was terminated after a monitoring commission found that the assumed investment plan had not been fulfilled. “Gările Auto Moderne” was to hand over in good condition all the assets taken over in 2018 from the state-owned enterprise “Gările și Stațiile Auto”. The PPA worked out an action plan and within two months, until December 1, 2022, the bus stations were already supposed to start work under the management of the state-owned enterprise. In the meantime, the head of the PPA resigned and then the next head also resigned, before Roman Cojuhari was appointed and still holds the position of director of the PPA. In August this year, the PPA employees forcibly took over the assets.
