This is translation from Romanian. The original story is HERE. 

Not only corruption was exposed as a result of the scandal around the fake auctions for food products which the municipality of Chisinau was buying for schools and kindregartens, but it showed the lack of responsibility of many public authorities and suppliers alike. 

According to the National Anticorruption Center (CNA), the contest conditions had been written purposefully in order to favor certain suppliers and education officials were offering information about competitors for a reward. 

Ghena Has Earned Over 40 Million Lei

Fish with parasites, smelly chickens, sulphat-washed potatoes – these products were systematically sold to kindergartens in the capital. Wiretaps from CNA have made one of the men involved in this scandal quite famous: ”Ghena”, who is heard giving orders to move a shipment of decayed products from one kindergarten to another. 

The man is Ghenadie Nicorici, founder and manager of three firms which have earned more than 40 million lei from public auctions since 2011 till now. In 2015 alone his firms supplied 10 million lei worth of products to public institutions. We found that those firms are Cordacom SRL, which was founded by Ghenadie Nicorici and Nicolae Curchi in 2000; Crinic Grup SRL, which is owned solely by Mr Nicorici; and an individual enterprise called Nica Nicorici. 

One small detail which is quite important is that his wife is a functionary at the Tax Service, a case that might raise questions about a conflict of interests, since Mr Nicorici’s firms had supplied food to hospitals and prisons, too.

Eighteen persons have been arrested in connection with the scandal. The heads of municipal departments and city hall officials who were nabbed have been suspended for the duration of enquiry. 

Whether anyone at the Public Health Center (CNSP) or the National Food Safety Agency (ANSA) – two authorities that must check the quality of food – will suffer any consequences is a question without answer. 

“CNSP sends inspections every week at kindergartens, it never says when inspectors get deployed.

The city hall says a solution that would help avoid similar situations in the future is to deliver ready-made food from certified catering services. 

Boastful Public Acquisition Agency 

The Public Acquisition Agency (APP), which is in charge with overseeing the public purchases process, praised itself for a webpage dedicated to “Transparency of food purchase auctions”on its website Tender.gov.md. That page says literally: “… uploads the reports filed by the contracting parties as a result of auctions for food for school and pre-school institutions… This initiative is designed to ensure transparency and to inform society about the public acquisition procedures.”

There’s been two years since it was last updated. 

A Market of Billions of Lei

Public purchases have always been and remain one of the most attractive and profitable occupation for companies looking for easy money. 

AAP’s data show that in 2014 the state spent 10.84 billion lei from the budget for various acquisitions; that amount is 3.36 billion lei more than in 2013 and the increase is 45%. 

In 2015 the spending dropped to 6.46 billion lei. The explanation for this decrease is the crisis and the budgetary deficit, which forced AAP in June 2015 to halt public acquisitions for several months. When the process resumed the pie was much smaller. 

During the first half of 2016 there were less public acquisition contracts than in 2014 and than in 2015. Overall they were worth 3.15 billion lei. Most part of the money goes for construction, repairs, medication, and fuels. 

Mold-Street has tried to calculate how much money has been spent for food products – hundreds of millions and even billions of lei. It’s hard to get an exact figure, because products and services are not divided by category or type – all the information is mixed into the same pool. 

The most expensive purchases for food were registered in 2013: some 614 million lei, or 8.2% of all the money spent in public purchases. In 2014 the sum dropped to some 475 million lei, which was 4.4% of the total. In 2015 food purchases accounted for 400 million lei, which represented 6.1% of all. In the first half of 2016 the food purchases were worth almost 180 million lei.

Whose Fault?

There’s plenty of laws and regulations in the public acquisitions area in Moldova, as well as institutions for monitoring and reporting. Everyone however is trying to hide behind those laws and institutions and settle disputes in a system that exists in parallel to the legal framework. As a result the bulk of money falls into bank accounts of a small number of firms that are affiliated to high ranking officials. 

Olesea Stamate from the Association for Efficient and Responsible Governance says that many classical schemes exist in Moldova’s deeply corrupt public acquisitions. Although the legislation in this area is being upgraded on a continuous basis, the mechanisms of control are missing, she noted.

“There are irregularities which everyone can see at the very first glance. They are regularly reported by us during the purchase monitoring, or by investigative journalists, so we wonder why the government can’t see them. It is not a secret that public acquisitions are often washed in frauds. Often from the formal point of view things are alright, if you pause to analyze the case, but all the deals are done under the table or behind the curtains, and then we get what we get,”Mr Stamate told the Free Europe Radio.

This way the entire system of laws and institutions in Moldova has become in fact a giant organism that covers and stimulated corruption in the public acquisition area.

* * *