Councilors are to notify the Prosecution about the expenditure of 600 thousand lei for acquired flags.

Some municipal councilors intend to notify the municipal prosecution office and ask the interim mayor Vasile Ursu to provide a report on the expenditure of 600 thousand lei from the municipal budget for the procurement of flags for the Independence Day celebrations. The municipal councilor from the “Moldova Noastra” Alliance, Oleg Cernei, told Info-Prim Neo that the flags are of a poor quality and have been bought at an exaggerated price. According to the procedure, the mayor does not have the right to make costly purchases without the consent of the local council, having to present them for examination with a decision draft accompanied by the estimated expenditures, and also, prior to that, a tender had to be announced for the selection of the economic agent which would manufacture the flags, the cited source notes. According to Cernei, the flags were ready late in the evening of August 26, so that tens of employees of the municipal services have had to climb the pillars at night in order to put them up, and because the coat of arms is printed only on one side of the flags, being invisible on the other, they have been forced to merge 2 flags each and to fix them with wooden bars so that they wouldn’t get carried away by the wind. “On the 27th of August, many of these unhooked and were let loose in the wind which Vasile Ursu threw the tax payers money on”, declared Oleg Cernei. The councilor also expressed his confusion related to the fact that the procurement of the flags was made by the chief of the Public Relations Office, Svetlana Frunze, named in this position only a few days in advance, even though, according to the law, those in charge of the procurement and installation of the flags in the city had to be the Housing and Communal, and Cultural Offices, Cernei stated. The municipal councilor says that the approximately 600 thousand lei could have been spent on the stringent needs of the city, the amount being sufficient for the capital reparation of the sewerage system on the central street of Durlesti, or of a number of roofs; or on the illumination of 2 streets. According to the cited source, the first meeting of the municipal council (CMC) will address an interpellation to the municipal prosecutor for an investigation in this case, named by Cernei “a laundering of public money”. According to him, the government was responsible for the Independence Day celebration, and once last year’s flags have been abandoned, which were of much better quality then those bought by Ursu, it had to cover the expenses for the procurement of the flags as well, The chief representative of PPCD in the CMC, Alexandru Cordureanu, also feels that the cost of the flags was exaggerated. He claims that the party that he represents has bought, during the last parliamentary elections, orange flags which cost 50 and 100 lei per one piece, and not 70 and almost 200 lei, as the city hall has done. Cordureanu confirmed the fact that the CMC meeting has not addressed the expenditure of 600 thousand lei, claiming that he only heard about the procurement of the flags accidentally. According to him, the counselors of the PPCD fraction will demand an account of this transaction from Ursu during the next meeting. The chief of the budget, economy, finance and the local public patrimony commission within the CMC, Vitali Secara, counselor on behalf of the communist party, has said that he does not know anything about the purchase of the flags and will be informed by his CMC colleagues if during the vacation, the allocation of 600 thousand lei from the municipal budget for the procurement of the flags was discussed. At the same time, Secara believes that these 600 thousand lei could have represented money allocated for the preparations for the holidays.