93 auto carriers, suspected of using fake transport authorizations

The Transports Agency (TA) investigates 93 companies providing international auto transportation services under suspicion of using counterfeited transport authorizations, Info-Prim Neo has learned from a TA official, under condition of not making his name public. The search started after Russia threatened Moldova earlier in May with banning deliveries of merchandise carried by trucks registered in Moldova, on reason that their owners work with false authorizations. The Transports Agency has already withdrawn the licenses of 14 auto companies. When asked by Info-Prim Neo, the president of the International Association of Auto Transporters from Moldova (AITA), Vladimir Florea, has said 70% of the commissions carried out by the Moldovan companies are found on the Russian market. Florea explains the auto scandal with Russia by “the lack of control on behalf of the competent organizations,” meaning the Moldovan authorities. For 2009, the Moldovan trucks received a quota of 1,370 multilateral transport authorizations from the European Conference of Transport Ministers (ECTM.) A key criterion to grant such authorizations is the environment pollution parameters displayed by the trucks. “We support the idea to clean this sector from offenders, who have grossly violated all the respective procedures, and thus hit all the Moldovan international carriers,” said Vladimir Florea. The TA official says there are announcement in advertising newspapers, which offer ECTM authorizations, although the TA is the only entity authorized to distribute those in Moldova. Vladimir Florea hints that the guilty ones would have profited from the frequent transformations the authorities responsible for transport have undergone. In June 2008, the Transports Ministry was dissolved. The Government explained the move through “the need to deepen the reform of the central public administration and to cut the number of public servants.” In September 2008, the Greceanai Government set up the Transports Agency, by reorganizing the Transports Ministry and the Civil Aviation Agency. And back in April 2008, the Government set up the Auto Transport National Agency (ANTA). Two months earlier, in February 2008, the Government dissolved the state enterprise “Moldova’s Agency for International Traffic” (AMTAI), which had dealt with negotiating the ECTM multilateral authorizations till that time.