The National Integrity Authority (ANI) announces that on August 8 it initiated a wealth control on the name of Vasile Șarco, former director of the Office for Prevention and Fight against Money Laundering (SPCSB). Integrity inspectors say they will check Șarco’s wealth following information presented in an article published by Ziarul de Gardă about the anti-money laundering chief’s family homes and cars.

According to the Integrity Inspector appointed to conduct the checks, by comparing the information analysed and the preventive calculations made with the legal definitions mentioned in the ZdG article, a substantial difference was found between the wealth of Șarco and his family members, held at the beginning of the period in which he became the subject of the declaration, cumulated with the income obtained and the expenses incurred, and the wealth held at the beginning of the check.

The complaint also states that in the period from 2014 to 2021, Șarco, who held the position of director of the SPCSB, purchased movable and immovable property, registering them with intermediaries who apparently did not have the necessary financial availability, as well as incurred exorbitant expenses in favour of his family members, which are to be examined in the control procedure.

Vasile Șarco submitted his resignation request from the position of director of the Service for Prevention and Combating Money Laundering (SPCSB) on 10 September 2021. In a comment to Ziarul de Gardă, the press service of the SPCSB told us at the time that Șarco submitted his resignation request on his own initiative.

In November 2017, ZdG wrote about the family homes and cars of the anti-money laundering chief.

Earlier, Ziarul de Gardă wrote that Vasile Șarco, who left the NAC to head the new Service for the Prevention and Combating of Money Laundering, had a salary of 243,534 lei or more than 20 thousand lei a month in 2017. His wife, Diana, employed in the Legal Department of the National Health Insurance Company, collected a monthly salary of 19.3 thousand lei. But it wasn’t always so. In 2012, for example, the Șarcos earned monthly salaries of 6 and 7 thousand lei. Even with those salaries, in 2013 they managed to complete the construction of two luxury buildings in Bubuieci, mun. Chisinau, on land they bought in 2006.

The first two-storey building stands on 8 acres of land which came into the possession of the Șarcos in 2006, following a sale/purchase contract. In February 2013, the house built there was put into service. Although in the land registry data and in the declaration of assets and interests submitted by Vasile Șarco to the National Integrity Authority, the house has a surface area of 139 sq.m., in reality it looks much larger.

On an adjoining plot of land, the Șarcos built another house, smaller in size, which they sold in March 2013, just a month after it had been put into operation, to the parents of the head of the Directorate of CNA. However, the transaction is not reflected in the declaration on income and property filed by Vasile Șarco in 2013 with the National Integrity Commission. In addition to real estate, Vasile and Diana Șarco also drive luxury cars: a Toyota RAV 4, manufactured in 2014 and purchased in 2015, and a 2007 Toyota Hilux, acquired in 2013. Like most NAC employees, Vasile Șarco declares that the cars are not owned by his family, but are used.

Vasile Șarco: “The Toyota RAV 4 is owned and registered in the name of my wife’s father, Vasile Volociuc, and the Toyota Hilux is owned and registered in the name of my father – Vladimir Șarco. Both cars are not the property of the family because my wife has two sisters and I have a brother, and they are only temporarily transferred in use. As for the properties in com. Bubuieci: the lot of 11 acres was divided into two parts – one of 8 acres, where the house registered in the name of my wife and me is built, and 3 acres were transferred free of charge to my parents, who built the house from their own sources, starting from 2011. I have built only one house from my own sources and help from wife’s parents and close relatives. The house that belongs to my family was built since 2006, completed and put into use in January 2013,” Șarco explains in 2017.