Six months after signing a twenty-five-year public-private partnership contract for all bus stations in the Republic of Moldova, the private partner, Garile Auto Moderne LLC, changed owners. New associates replaced the construction company that had previously held an 85% stake in the share capital of the company that was going to run the bus stations, including a Ukrainian citizen, a French businessman in Chişinău and a local company. 

In December 2018, after a one-participant contest, the Public Property Agency (PPA) granted Garile Auto Moderne LLC a 25-year contract to operate the bus stations in Moldova. Its founders were the construction company Exfactor-Grup (85%) and U.S. citizen Lluka Muco (15%). ZdG wrote that in recent years, Exfactor-Grup – owned by Vladimir Tonu – conducted various business affairs with companies controlled by Ilan Shor and carried out construction and modernization work at Chişinău International Airport, which is controlled by Shor through the company Avia Invest. Exfactor-Grup was also one of the sponsors of the Shor Party in the electoral campaign for the parliamentary elections from February 24​^​. 

New owners: a Ukrainian, a Frenchman and a local firm 

After six months, Garile Auto Moderne ended up in the hands of Oksana Demchenko, a Ukrainian citizen. In a matter of weeks, the concessioning company changed owners again: 50% remained under Demchenko’s ownership and 25% went to the French businessman Arif Franck Charles. He is the owner of Le Bridge, which earlier this year privatized another state property – Tutun-CTC. The other 25% of the share capital of Garile Auto Modernes belongs to Ramin-Lux LLC, founded by siblings Maria and Alexandru Vîlcu. Alexandru Vîlcu is the founder or co-founder of 10 companies registered in Moldova. In June, he also became a member of DFM LLC, a former Shor Group company, active in the duty-free business. 

“We stopped being owners long ago. We tried, we realised that it’s beyond our potential and we disposed of the shares,” Vladimir Tonu told ZdG. 

Bus stations in the footsteps of the airport 

“Unfortunately, to this day, all these experiences were sad and ended with the ‘off-shoring’ and the removal of legal property from Moldova into off-shore areas,” says Veaceslav Negruţa, an expert from Transparency International Moldova and former Minister of Finance. 

Oleg Tofilat, public policy expert and former state secretary at the Ministry of Transport and Road Infrastructure, also sees similarities between the airport and bus stations’ concessions. Tofilat confirmed that bus stations shouldn’t have been given in concession. 

The public-private partnership contract signed by the Public Property Agency with Garile Auto Moderne hasn’t been made public. ZdG requested access to the contract in January 2019, but unfortunately the PPA refused and invoked confidentiality clauses. 

The concession of bus stations on the agenda of a Parliamentary investigation commission

The contract for the concession of bus stations came to the attention of the Parliamentary Investigation Commission that deals with the evaluation of privatizations and concessions of public property from the period 2013–2019. Along with this contract, the Commission will analyze the concession of the Chişinău International Airport, the privatization of Air Moldova and of the Tutun CTC Company, over a period of 120 days.