STOLEN BILLION WILL BE RETURNED AND LEGALIZED IN THE COUNTRY - TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL EXPERT

Authorities promote laws, which will allow returning the billion, stolen from Moldovan banks, and legalize it in the country, maintains Transparency International Moldova expert Veaceslav Negruta.

At the Friday's sitting of the Journalist Club, he said that at the first stage the authorities adopted several legislative initiatives for capital legalization.

"It is about the Law on capital liberalization and the tax stimulation, which implies amnesty of capital not only for Moldovan citizens. The National Anti-Corruption Center (NACC) called this project a mechanism for money laundering. Fortunately, under the pressure of the society and external partners, the document was recalled from the Parliament", the expert explained.

He said that the second stage is connected with the law, which implies providing of Moldovan citizenship in exchange for investments. At this stage, the stolen billions of lei should come back to Moldova via a kind of messengers.

"There is no sense to provide citizenship to people, who are not interested in it, except for making them couriers. The explanatory note to the law says that the practice of providing citizenship exists in many countries. However, only in two states the citizenship is issued for providing loan to the state - Cyprus and Malta. Thus, Moldova is becoming a new offshore zone in Europe", Negruta said.

According to him, the issuing of credit to the state with its consequent returning to the creditor five years after that is nothing else but the legalization of funds. "If multiplying 5 thousand couriers, mentioned in this law, by 250 thousand euros, we got the sum everyone is talking about", he said.

Negruta said that the Law on de-criminalization of economic offences in Moldova is a concluding stage of this scheme.