The director general of the Customs Service Vitalie Vrabie said that they didn’t really want to root out corruption from the system and provided indirect evidence about the enormous damage caused to the state budget through the agency of Customs during the last few years. The official developed the issue in the program “Fabrika” on Publika TV channel, IPN reports.

Vitalie Vrabie considers that owing to corruption and the illegalities committed in the system, the Customs Service over the last few years discredited itself more than in other periods, even if it had the instruments needed to work legally and to keep its image clean.

“To be sincere, they didn’t want to eliminate corruption because it is very easy to identify tax evasion and the Customs Service has enough instruments to supervise and monitor this process. Moreover, there are sufficient post-clearance control instruments by which the possible frauds can be determined. The Customs, throughout its history, was different from the current one. Over the last few years, the Customs discredited itself more than in other periods of time. The large sums of money that weren’t collected into the budget are a proof of this,” stated the new head of the Customs Service.

According to him, the inappropriate work of the Customs caused also another kind of damage. “The imports allowed without contribution to the state budget led to disloyal competition on the market and prevented the business entities from working fairly and in a civilized way and from remaining competitive. This prevented a large number of potential foreign operators from making investments and contributing significantly to the country’s economic development,” stated Vitalie Vrabie.

He considers that the illegalities committed in the Customs were possible because there was a well-thought-out mechanism inside the Customs Service and this was protected by obedient persons and bodies from outside it.

In support of his statements about the considerable damage caused to the state budget through Customs, the Customs Service’s director general provided and compared the budget income figures this year and last year.

“We can understand the seriousness of the problem by the realities we had in January-April 2016. In January, about 30 million lei failed to be collected into the state budget. In March, the Customs Service recovered those 30 million lei and ensured a growth of about 9.7% compared with a year ago. During 26 days this month, the Customs Service collected by 20% more incomes compared with the corresponding period last year. During the four months altogether, the Customs Service collected by 385 million lei (8.7%) more than in 2015,” he stated.