– How expected or unexpected was June 14? What did you understand then ?

– We had some hopes that something might happen in the last few days. We thought that in the last few days some MPs might become more courageous and we worked in this sense, we have tried to encourage more colleagues in the Parliament. Things evolved really quickly. No one could tell what will happen next. At the same time there have been major concerns regarding the peaceful transition of power.

– So we can say that nobody knew what would happen, how would it go?

– I am most certain that nobody knew. From what we know, things happened the following way. On Friday we remained in the  Parliament and we waited for members of the Socialist Party to respond to our repeated invitations. Finally, they came. Our first discussion was neither encouraging nor discouraging. We talked over a few things, not all the important things. I insisted on meeting on Saturday morning. By Saturday morning, we set out a collaboration agreement, a political partnership. We ensured that the government team is formed. We had previously discussed with some of the current members of the Government. Things happened in just a few days. In the end things happened as they did.

– At the moment, do you think you have gained more or lost more?

– We are sure we have liberated the country from that regime and it counts what we have gained for citizens and as citizens. We already recovered some liberties, they must be strengthened, we need to consolidate diplomatic processes and institutions. Despite being a difficult process it still keeps us optimistic as the things we did in a few days and the fact that people started to feel free in the country were worth this risk.

– Although it was a week of threats from the Democratic Party, the withdrawal was too simple. What did you understand? Why did Vlad Plahotniuc leave the country so quickly, did he accept everything so easily? Why doesn’t he get back to Parliament or wherever his job is?

– I do not know exactly what determined him to leave, we can only assume that there was pressure coming from outside the country. I refer here to the messages and  suggestions of not resorting to violence and transmitting the power peacefully. Probably there was also the pressure from the citizens as we had announced a People’s March that was later canceled. I suspect that it was this combination of internal and external pressure …

– Yet, there has been external pressure before, the funding has been stopped … Why now?

– When there was a Government voted by a legitimate Parliament, things have changed. Here again, in Plahotniuc’s team, there were more people who were afraid to make utterly illegal decisions when a legally formed Government took office. That could be one of the additional reasons.

–  Corruption was among the extremely complicated issues of the former government. Presently, if the prosecution and justice do not work justly, how do you analyze the corruption cases that might have taken place in the government itself?

– It is true, and it is a big problem that we cannot count on our colleagues at the NAC and on the prosecution. Hence we have to carry out these investigations. Analyses are made at every ministry, at the Ministry of Economy, for example, I know that more suspicious transactions are investigated and for the moment we are going to continue in the same direction. At the same time we want for the experienced competent authorities, that must be able to do this according to the law, to become functional as soon as possible. Besides, we discussed with all foreign partners, we have requested assistance from everywhere, including from the International Monetary Fund. We discussed with the World Bank, which has a special department; we discussed with the governments of countries with anti-corruption expertise to help us, including financial assistance, so we can contract international companies for very high corruption. So we are working very hard, and in a few weeks I think we’ll have real support.

– One of the greatest expectations of citizens is to identify the billion and to return as much as possible. Citizens really want to see a sign, even if they probably will not get this money, but there is a need for a sign of justice in this case. What can be done?

– I believe the new General Prosecutor will have this as a priority issue. Everyone is waiting, as it is the biggest fraud ever encountered, in the Republic of Moldova and not only, and it is the job of the prosecutor and we, members of the Government, will do our best. As far as I understand, Kroll representatives are ready to come to the Republic of Moldova to discuss about the copy of the missing Kroll 2 report. In addition, we want to discuss with them or with another company  a money-recovery contract.

– So, you haven’t seen the report yet?

– Not yet. I talked with the Governor of the National Bank who told me that the National Bank does not have the report. He told me that the day the Kroll 2 report came to the National Bank, it was immediately taken over by the General Prosecutor’s Office. Now we need to investigate, whether anyone from the National Bank has seen it or not, because that was during the previous Governor. The copy of the Kroll 2 report is most probably at the General Prosecutor’s Office and we cannot get it.

– Did you make a request?

– We have made a request to Kroll to provide us with a copy of this report.

– When you get the copy, will you make this report public? It is a report paid by the citizens ‘money, so it is the citizens’ information.

– I agree with you. We have registered in Parliament a bill that will allow us to declassify all the information related to all kinds of public money transactions and state wealth; we were surprised to find out when asking for the contracts related to all kinds of suspicious privatizations that this is a state secret. I consider that this in no way must be a state secret, especially for my colleagues, first of all, who came to the offices and could not work for they did not have access to this information. We need to be able to provide information for the media and for all the citizens who are interested.

– Do you think that your partners in Parliament are interested in voting such a law?

– I do not see why not. So far, they have shown commitment to correcting, revealing all corruption schemes. We have not even had a single contradictory discussion in this respect.

– Now about a European Public Prosecutor, a prosecutor from a foreign country to have no relationships or risks of corruptibility. Could we have such a prosecutor?

– This is what we want too. This is our objective; we do not yet have an agreement with the Socialist Party. I do not know if we can convince them to do away with the citizenship criterion, but in any case we will fight and I’m sure we’ll get the next prosecutor to be an independent, courageous, professional person. We have broadened the spectrum of those who can apply by having modified, in the first reading, the law with the amendments. So there is no need for long experience as a prosecutor. the door opens also for people who might come from, for example, civil society who are specialists in the field but who have not worked in the prosecutor’s offices.

– The former Government did not react to media investigations or critical analysis of corrupt individuals; will you adopt another pattern of behavior?

– We have always read your investigations and we read them now, we want to use this opportunity to liberate state institutions, to bring honest and integral people to public functions. This is the most important thing. We get informed from our investigative journalists and we hope that soon we shall be able to also count on what the state institutions and especially the law enforcement bodies do.

– These ministers who came from the Diaspora had well-paid positions in well-rated institutions in well-developed countries. Why did they have to come to small pay, to a Government where things are still quite unsteady?

– Because it is an opportunity, because, on the one hand, things were really grave and if we allowed the corrupt and anti-democratic regime to stay for a few years more, then there would have remained even fewer honest people in this country. It is an opportunity, for as I believe in them, so they believe in me. We know we can make a team where things are done right, we support each other.

– Why isn’t it about money?

– It’s certainly not about money. On the contrary, these people are making sacrifices, because they all have families and they had to separate, some had to leave their children and their wives there, others had to bring their children and wives, to leave their jobs there, to bear some expenses, because people had apartment rentals to pay. These people make great sacrifices, but it is worth doing it.

– You yourself, at one point, left a well paid job and came here and made some sacrifices, you lived some years in a continuous fight?

– Three years, I did volunteering.

– Was it worth it?

– It was.

– Would you do that again?

– The fact that we got this much means it was worth it. And now we have a chance to use in the interests of the citizen, we are willing to do everything in our power, we know how great the expectations are, we know how great the responsibilities are and we know that we can only succeed if everyone will put their shoulder to the wheel.

– There have been more guests from the outside community and promises to unblock European funding. What should the ordinary citizen understand: what will external financing contribute to? How will his or her life be improved and when?

– The citizen should know, first of all, that the previous government has made many promises – salary increases and other expenses for which it did not provide any resources. Unless this external financing are achieved, all wage increases and other initiated projects could not be covered. That would have been a major problem if Filip government remained. They demonstrated their inability to obtain external resources. By this autumn, they would have come to a situation when salaries and other expenses would not have been paid. Hopefully, this external assistance which we expect to receive very quickly, will help us to plug a big budget hole that we inherited. Even so, we will have to see where there are some ineffective expenditures, where there are some programs that benefited the Democratic Party with money from the state budget and which we’ll have to correct, but for now this money will be used to plug the budget hole. Obviously, for the future, we want to come up with new projects, with social projects, especially with investment projects, to support the economic development of Moldova.

– So, for now, unlocking European money would mean continuing wage payments, pensions and so on …

– To a large extent, we need to cover funding sources for expenses that have been budgeted without being budgeted, or provide sufficient income sources.

– Could we witness the return of public money?

– As you know, there is a Money Recovery Agency, which has not recovered any money so far, I guess it was not even functional, because it probably did not want that. I know that the World Bank (WB) helped create this Agency. I will discuss today with the WB team to see how we can put this institution on its feet again. Obviously, we need to identify people who are good specialists and, once they have all the political support, get on with it.

– One of the major concerns of Moldovan citizens is this cooperation with the Russian authorities, the frequent visits of Kozak and other Russian officials. The fears are federalization, that Moldova will lose more of its independence, because we already have an army of the Russian Federation on the territory of Moldova. What are the risks? What could happen? What are some provisos you need to respect?

– Nothing is required. First of all, I want everyone to know that there is no risk of federalization. We also said this at the first meeting with representative of Russian Federation, Deputy Prime Minister Kozak. I said that we are against federalization, that we are a pro-European force, and so we remain. Yesterday at the discussion we had, I said again that the strategic objective of Moldova is European integration, that the implementation of the Association Agreement is the basis for our work. I told him that we are ready to see how the economic and trade relationship with Russia can be improved and we have put on the agenda the 14 categories of goods for which we had problems right after the signing of the Association Agreement and the Free Trade Agreement Exchange, and Russia has upset Moldova and created these export barriers. We only agreed that a bilateral committee would be made, as we have with other countries, somewhere in the autumn, on the subject of economic relations. Our Government colleagues will discuss with the Russian side and see if we can find solutions to these economic issues. There is no change in the Transnistrian conflict settlement, we have clearly stated that we are interested and we will do our best to eliminate the corruption schemes, especially those involving both Kiev and Chisinau together with the Tiraspol regime. There are energy issues that we need to find solutions to within European policies, so nothing except an effort to solve these economic and trade problems.

– Andrei Năstase, your political partner, voted for Russia re-admittance into PACE…

–I was surprised by his decision too. I think you’d better talk to him. I can speak for my colleagues, as Mr Popsoi, who voted in favor of Ukraine.

– Do these dialogues with representatives of the Russian Federation lead to the elimination of certain risks or to increasing them?

– I do not see how these dialogues can lead to greater risks. What we are proposing is, as we have said, to improve trade relations, to see if this is possible, to see if we can improve the situation of Moldovans working in Russia. Otherwise, the risks are there, they have always been. How can we reduce them? By building strong state institutions so that these institutions can reduce external risks, but beyond this, a geopolitical opportunity is needed to solve the Transnistrian conflict and this conflict can only be solved with the involvement of the world’s great powers.

– The government has very attractive plans. What are the risks that the Government is dismantled?

– First, there are attempts of sabotage by the previous government. There are some risks that we try to eliminate, but the risks are still there. Besides, obviously, there are still differences between the options of the ACUM bloc and those of the socialists. Yes, we did agree to put aside these differences, but that does not mean that at some point they cannot reappear, even if at this point we have a constructive dialogue between the Government and the Parliament, we coordinate the agenda, but these risks exist. Obviously, the fact that we took upon ourselves the consequences of bad governance, including the budget, the tariffs, for example, the National Bank policies, because the previous government intervened and did not give the National Bank the opportunity to do the job as needed and we will see in the coming months some implications. For example, in the sphere of transport, carriers complain that no tariff increases have been made there because they have been artificially kept. Now all these things come to light. There are all sorts of things, the consequences of bad policies, previous government interventions in the market economy, and all of this obviously complicates the present government’s situation. There is also the question of how quickly we will reinstate external funding. We will certainly restore it, but there are procedures that we have to respect. For example, funding from the EU can only come after we re-establish our relationship with the International Monetary Fund. There is also the holiday period in August when all Brussels and Washington officials are gone, so it takes time. These are the risks, but we ask the citizens to stay with us, to keep an eye on us, but at the same time to be aware that we have inherited a deficient situation from the previous government and we cannot solve all the problems in two weeks.

– And one of the last questions comes from my mother, whom I met this morning, and when I told her we were going to interview you, she requested me to ask who could buy Maia Sandu?

– No one can buy me. I do not know what your mother meant.

– She referred to the trauma she has had as a citizen, she had confidence in X or Y, and they seemed to be nice, but at one point that politician proved corrupt or became corruptible.

– I do not think we had so many true and honest politicians so far, so I do not think we should compare with what we’ve had before. I think it’s the first time, and I’m proud of this, when we have a party that is financed transparently, legally, absolutely right, we can answer for absolutely all the money that we have spent. I can answer for all the money I have earned and have ever spent, I have nothing to hide, and this Government has nothing to hide. Now if we can do what people expect from us – it’s another question. We want to do everything to people, but there are many constraints, we have some state institutions that work as they do and they will not get perfect overnight. There are a lot of inherited problems, we have a weak economy because businessmen have been harassed, they are fleeing, they are in jail, because the labor force has gone abroad, because the middle class is not in Moldova now, but abroad, in diaspora … There are many problems, I would not want to talk about everything. I am confident that my government team is made of honest persons and they will not do things that have been done in the past. We will strive to increase citizens’ living standards as soon as possible and we  hope to succeed.

– The last question is for the readers of Ziarul de Gardă. We have devoted readers that have been following us for 15 years, who are greatly interested in issues such as corruption and human rights. What would you wish them, what message would you address?

– I want to congratulate them for they are resistant; they are the people who had the courage to read the newspaper when it came, to read about corruption schemes and not be completely discouraged, to remain optimistic and stay in the country. I think we need people who want to know the whole truth no matter what complicated and ugly it is sometimes, because if we close our eyes and shut our ears, then severe things happen. Let’s be civic-minded, stay so and fight for our rights to the end.

– Thank you very much! 

Alina RADU, alina.radu@zdg.md