Law enforcement officers carried out searches this morning, November 5, in the investigation regarding the purchase of the 31 ISUZU buses by the Urban Bus Park of the municipality of Chișinău.
Former acting mayor of the capital, Ruslan Codreanu, issued a reply in this regard. "I am receiving messages because people are worried about me. I haven't been visited neither by police officers nor by prosecutors nor have searches been conducted at my residence. There is no reason to search my residence. The bus purchase investigation can only lead to inflamatory headlines, nothing more", said the former mayor.
On September 10, law enforcement bodies initiated a criminal investigation for the potential illegal actions of General Department for Public Transport and Communications decision-makers. Law enforcement bodies have suspicions that the public procurement procedure was carried out with deviations, which violate the basic principles of public procurement. At that time, the former interim mayor said that neither was he involved in the drafting of the task book nor was he a member of the bus acquisition task group. The contracting authority was the Urban Bus Park.
The purchase of the 31 new buses cost the municipality 78 million lei. The new transport units arrived in Chișinău in February this year. The public sphere generated suspicions that unneeded middlemen were involved in the purchase, which drove the prices up and enriched the middlemen.
