The Public Property Agency is part of the Vîlcu-Andronachi group, which manages the bus stations in the Republic of Moldova, the head of the Employers’ Association of Motor Transport Operators (APOTA), Oleg Alexa, said at a press conference hosted by IPN. According to Alexa, the Agency does nothing to return the stations back under state management, and this makes him believe that it is on the side of the group that owns the stations.
He explained that the company “Gările și Stațiile Auto” (“Bus Terminals and Stations”) is a state-owned enterprise, which until 2008 managed most of the stations in the Republic of Moldova. However, by a Government decision, it was obliged to transfer them, based on a public-private partnership contract, to an LLC – “Gările Auto Moderne” (“Modern Auto Stations”) - a private enterprise managed by the Vîlcu-Andronachi group.
“Gara Nord” (“North Terminal”) is another enterprise in which the state had a majority holding and which was sold to the same Vîlcu-Andronachi group.
The Vîlcu-Andronachi group owns the largest railway station in the Republic of Moldova – the North Station in Chisinau. It also manages most of the railway stations in the municipality of Chisinau and in district centers through the public-private partnership contract.
Oleg Alexa explained that in 2018, the Government adopted a decision by which it accepted the public-private partnership contract and ordered that all the property of the bus terminals and stations should be transferred to “Gările Auto Moderne” for modernization. It was a trick, says the head of APOTA, which had the purpose of seizing state property and had nothing to do with the modernization of the transport branch and stations.
The fact that this contract was a dubious one was proven by the documents of two commissions. One was the document of the Court of Auditors, which questioned the need to conclude the public-private partnership contract and revealed a lot of violations. The second was the document of the special commission of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova, which also established a series of violations and hidden interests.
All this led to the start of a criminal case by the Prosecutor’s Office, which has not yet been completed. Oleg Alexa believes that the civil servants who favored the conclusion of such contracts were to be investigated and probably tried.
Note: IPN Agency offers the right of reply to persons who consider themselves targeted in the news articles produced based on the statements of the organizers of this press conference, including by facilitating the organization of another press conference under similar conditions.
