An employee of the Inspectorate for Environmental Protection and a representative of a business entity, investigated by the NAC for acts of systemic corruption

The National Anti-corruption Centre (NAC) and the prosecutors of the municipality of Chisinau are investigating a systemic corruption scheme at the Inspectorate for Environmental Protection (IPM) within which acts of passive corruption with extortion of goods and financial means from business entities are being investigated in exchange for providing support in order to complete technical books and documentation in the field of environmental protection in order to speed up the process of issuing environmental permits.

In addition to the above, it was established that the head of the Pollution Payments and Taxes Control Service of the IPM allegedly demanded and systematically received illicit remuneration from the administrator of the Ecological Investigation Centre (an entity that provides assistance to economic agents in the development of draft technical books and documentation in the field of environmental protection) in exchange for personally completing the reports on environmental pollution payments submitted to the State Tax Service, and within the framework of the planned controls to verify the correctness of the calculation and the completeness of the transfer to the budget of payments for pollutant emissions, to confirm the correctness of these, and not to detect any legal violations.

To effectively document the case, today the NAC officers conducted searches at the homes, work offices and cars of the IPM employee and the administrator of the economic agent targeted by the criminal case. Both individuals are being investigated at large, and all criminal prosecution actions are being conducted under the leadership of prosecutors from the Chisinau Municipal Prosecutor's Office.

We remind that any person shall be presumed innocent until a final and irrevocable court decision is rendered.