The 40 employees of the Public Services Agency (PSA), suspected of having received money from the Russian Federation through the PSB application, were suspended from their positions for a period of 30 days. The Agency’s director Mircea Eșanu said that most of the 40 employees suspected of having links with the Russian Federation are from the southern region of the country. The institution initiated an internal investigation to determine whether the suspects illegally accessed citizens' data, IPN reports.
The Public Services Agency, in cooperation with the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office and the General Police Inspectorate, carried out checks as a result of which there was identified a group of PSA employees who received money in reward for voting in the October 20 election and referendum.
"The overwhelming majority are employees of local offices. They are not employees of the central office or from Chisinau. In figures, I think that three-quarters of the 40 employees are from the southern part of the country, Comrat, Ceadâr-Lunga and Vulcănești. There are counter clerks, but we also have four heads of services, who manage the processes of issuing d0ocuments to the population in that district. How did we act towards them? First of all, we suspended them. When we issued the press release, all these people were notified, throughout the country. We discussed with them. Their access to computers and databases was barred. The persons were suspended from office for at least 30 days. Now we have two processes taking place in parallel. An internal investigation is being conducted. And there is also the ongoing criminal investigation," PSA director Mircea Eșanu stated in the program "The Shadow Cabinet" on JurnalTV.
He also said that the internal investigation will determine whether the institution's employees illegally accessed citizens' data or just sold their vote. "For now, we don't know exactly what damage was caused. That's what we will do on the inside. I consider it to be a great security risk and we take this issue extremely seriously. The PSA’s information systems have engines behind them, which track every movement of each employee through information systems. And this history is preserved over a long period of time. We can check if a year or two ago, these people accessed the data legally. We will verify whether they committed an abuse of office and searched through data where they were not allowed to or had no reason to search. It won't take us long to do such an investigation even if 40 employees are involved. We have enough information to talk about this reasonable suspicion that we also noted in the press release," Mircea Eșanu said.
On Thursday, the Public Services Agency was informed by the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office about suspicions that 40 employees of the institution had connections and received money from the Russian Federation through the PSB application. The facts that are being investigated.
