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Romanian customs seized the largest consignment of contraband cigarettes from Moldova

March 10, 2010
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On March 5, Romanian customs officers have seized at the Albita border checkpoint one of the largest consignments of contraband cigarettes, coming from its Eastern neighbor Moldova through the Leuseni customs, across the Prut River.

The market value of the consignment is estimated at 0.8 million Euros (about 1.1 million U.S. dollars). There were some 700,000 packs of Doina, Plugarul and MT brands produced in Chisinau at the Tutun CTC cigarette manufacturer transported in a truck. The Romanian authorities have mentioned the open way of crossing the border with contraband cigarettes, without even trying to hide it.

Watch Pro TV video (in Romanian)

The opposition parties did not miss their chance to take advantage of the situation and link this incident to Moldova’s Prime Minister Vlad Filat.

Omega news agency that is linked to the opposition Communist Party of Moldova reports that this is not by accident, hinting to the fact that the head of Moldovan Customs Service is Tudor Balitchi, who has been the manager of a Romanian company, Kapital Invest, which belongs to the family of Moldovan Prime Minister Filat. According to this source, the controlling shareholders of this company are Vladimir [a.k.a. Vlad] Filat and his wife Nadejda Filat, citing the Official Monitor of Romania no. 2789 of May 21, 2009. Balitchi was manager of this company starting April 13, 2009, immediately after the April 5 parliamentary elections held in the Republic of Moldova. Now, Tudor Balitchi holds the position of the head of Moldovan Customs Service since December 24, 2009, at the proposal of Prime Minister Filat.

Another publication, belonging to the opposition Christian-Democratic People's Party, Flux, has resurfaced old news about Vlad Filat’s past issues with the cigarette business. According to Flux, in 1998, the Romanian court in Iasi has accused Vlad Filat (back then a manager of Romold Trading SRL, registered in Romania's Iasi country) of smuggling, importing from Moldova to Romania 1,852,400 of packs of cigarettes of the MT brand without proper excise stamps of the Romanian government. The Romanian court passed the accusation materials to the Moldovan law enforcement bodies, but only in 2008 the case has been opened against Filat in Chisinau. Vlad Filat has accused the Moldovan Prosecutor office of executing political orders from the Communist Party-backed government (supported by CDPP). The case, reportedly, has been closed in January 2010, after Filat became Prime minister of Moldova.

Tudor Balitchi said to Pro TV that, according to documents presented to the customs, the truck was registered in Romania and the vehicle was coming from Ukraine, in transit through Moldova. The final destination of cargo was Turkey, while in documents were metal pipes instead of cigarettes. According to Romanian press, customs officers to train axles Albita found about 40 bags of sand as weight to match with the weight in the customs papers.

Truck driver is a Moldovan citizen named Anatol Ganea, who says he did not know what cargo was in the truck.

According to the Romanian customs, this is the biggest 'catch' of contraband since the declaration of independence of the Republic of Moldova.

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