The package of tax initiatives and capital amnesty adopted by Parliament on July 26 advantages and protects those with large ill-gotten gains and brings to an end the investigation and tracing of the stolen bank funds, Transparency International Moldova expert Veaceslav Negruta, ex-minister of finance, stated in the talk show “Politics of Natalia Morari” on TV8 channel, IPN reports.
The expert said the calculations done by Transparency International Moldova clearly show that the decrease in the income tax rate for large incomes from 18% to 12% and the rise in the rate for lower incomes from 7% to 12% benefit the citizens with large and very large revenues as these will monthly get 2,000-3,000 lei additionally. “When we speak about agriculture, medicine and education, the people working in these areas will remain with only 6-30 lei additionally in their pockets,” stated Veaceslav Negruta.
He noted the provision concerning the common tax rate can lead to a gap in the local public budgets. All the mayor’s offices will be deprived of a total of about 700-800 million lei annually as the local budgets depend on the income tax paid by private individuals and the mayor’s offices could be short of funds to pay for local activities.
Veaceslav Negruta warned that this year’s fiscal amnesty, which is the second after the attempt of 2016, is the same attempt to bring back to the country and legalize funds that were earlier stolen from Moldova’s banking system and possibly other ill-gotten gains from different jurisdictions by the citizenship by investment law.
“If the ruling political group had intended to investigate and recover the stolen US$1 billion, it wouldn’t have proposed such bills and would have definitely launched the tracing procedures much earlier and those mentioned in the KROLL report would have returned the money,” he stated.
The expert noted the reactions of the international institutions really show that the Moldovan authorities aim to isolate the country and to manage it and the legalized resources as they want. “Authorities’ statements that they are not interested in the conditions stipulated in the international agreements show the intention it to turn Moldova into a dictatorship and a kind of offshore and money laundering area. It will be actually a zone of risk and insecurity risk for all those who are near us and the treatment will be appropriate, including on the part of the EU,” stated Veaceslav Negruta.
