Prosecutors request 30-day pre-trial detention for Alexei Țîmbrovschi, the former director of Metalferos Company, a joint-stock company in which the state holds the majority stake. On November 8, a request in this regard was registered at the Chișinău Court, Ciocana headquarters.

The former director of Metalferos is accused that in complicity with the runaway oligarch Vlad Plahoniuc and other persons investigated in the case, they created and ran a criminal organization, through which they illegally acquired financial means in particularly large proportions, which later for the purpose to conceal or disguise their illicit origin have been converted or transferred in various ways.

Therefore, the former director of Metalferos is charged with the creation and management of a criminal organization, fraud in particularly large proportions, and money laundering, committed by a criminal organization and in particularly large proportions.

At the same time, the prosecutors ordered the initiation of investigations in order to search for the former director of Metalferos, who avoids presenting himself to prosecutors.

The Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office announced, on December 4, 2019, that 48 searches were carried out at Metalferos and other intermediaries, and seven people were detained for 72 hours. An arrest warrant was also issued for Alexei Țîmbrovschi, who led Metalferos in recent years. However, he left the country before the searches and was not found. Last week, prosecutors demanded the arrest of Vlad Plahotniuc in the Metalferos criminal case.

• The Runaway Oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc has been Charged with Creating and Running a Criminal Organization, Money Laundering, and Large-scale Fraud in the Metalferos Criminal Case

The former president of the Democratic Party, wanted by the law enforcement agencies in Chișinău, was the beneficiary of at least three companies that have benefited in recent years, directly or indirectly, from tens of millions of dollars contracts with Metalferos.

The money went into the accounts of the companies affiliated to Plahotniuc, including during the period when he held public positions, only that neither the money nor the companies were found in the wealth declarations of the former politician.

In July 2020, Ziarul de Gardă wrote that the law enforcement bodies have the same documents that ZdG analyzed, but, for more than eight months, the criminal case examining these circumstances remains on the prosecutors’ table.