"The bins business" between the Ministry of Environment and Chisinau City Hall in the sight of CNA

For two months now, the dumpsters from the streets of Chisinau are hiden under some constructions which you can not really find in European capitals. It's about sanitation shelves, trumpeted with great fanfare by the municipality in late November. The project - of exactly 27 million MDL and which was aimed to be a result of an unprecedented collaboration between the Ministry of Environment and Chisinau City Hall - has become the subject of a criminal case at CNA.

In the first days of December, Chisinau City Hall announced: the project of "Modernization platforms for waste collection" has begun. The project is implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Environment of Moldova, under a grant from the National Ecological Fund.

"In this project, it will be upgraded or built a total of 518 collection platforms for domestic waste, including 10 underground platforms. There will also be procured 490 new containers, which correspond to European standards. The total project value is 27 million lei."

The press headlined the event in mostly positive terms, willing to suggest that in Dorin Chirtoaca's European capital indeed, is made something tasteful.

In fact, "tastefully", "they washed" a few million in the shade of unprecedented collaboration between the Ministry of Environment, led by the Liberal Valeriu Munteanu, and Chisinau City Hall, conducted by another Liberal, Dorin Chirtoaca.

In other words, the Ministry of Environment, under which is the National Ecological Fund, decided that the most expensive project that it will finance in 2016 will be the construction of salubrity plateaus in Chisinau. In this regard has been allocated over 26 million lei, while the municipality was to co-finance the project with another two million.

The Head of Division Housing, Peter Gontea, asked us to discuss the details that interest us on the subject with his deputy, Vasile Efros. The Last told us that he does not remember all the companies that participated in the auction in September 2016. Instead, he read from a document that you have to face that the tender for the construction of plateaus - in a total amount of 26 350 000 MDL - was won by Rodicons SRL.

Asked to tell us exactly for what it will be spent this amount, he explained:

108 platters for two dumpsters - 29 000 MLD / per platter

162 platters for three dumpsters - 34 000 lei / per platter

120 platters for four bins - 46 000 lei / per platter

98 platters for six dumpsters - 76 000 lei / per platter

20 platters for eight dumpsters - 85 000 lei / per platter

10 underground platters - 29 thousand lei / per platter

We insisted to learn about the way how the tender took place, but Vasile Efros told us that all data we can find on the Public Procurement website. There, however, we found only older auctions (7 in total) that Rodicons SRL has won with state institutions, largely with the same Housing Directorate. About the tender in September 2016 - noting.

We made some calls to the officials of the Public Procurement and they were also very surprised to find that the auctioning in matter was not published! We found it only in the data base: date.gov.md - being guided by Angela Nani, the head of the statistical and electronic procurement.

Meanwhile we tried to find out if CNA found those costs for building a plateau too high. Or the suspicions started exactly from this point. Finally, we find that salubrity platters were built also in Hancesti, only twice cheaper.

The Mayor of Hancesti Alexander Botnari told us that the responsible Directorate within his Municipality came up with a proposal that they will contract workers and will buy materials. So they saved money and were built two platters more than expected.

Here are the costs incurred by the City hall of Hancesti:

Back to the tender at which we referred above. About Rodicons SRL we find that it is founded in 2012 and is administered by Rodica Roscovan - a name about whom the search engines do not tell us anything more. The company won 7 auctions with state institutions, but the costs were hundreds of thousands, i.e. insignificant, if we put along with the tender of over 26 million MDL, won in September 2016. Here the question arises: for which merit this company with five employees, according to data from State Tax Service, claims to manage a project of this scale?!

The math is overestimated and the suspicion of existence of certain conflicts of interest on this auction serve a reason for CNA to look into it:

"Yes, we have a criminal case at the stage of accumulation of materials that will help us to take the decision on initiation of criminal proceedings or, on the contrary, issuing a regulation not to start a criminal investigation", declared the Head of Department of criminal prosecution within CNA, Bogdan Zumbreanu.