New round of Russian cash buys votes in Moldova polls

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Ilan Shor, seen here campaigning in 2019, left the country before being found guilty of money laundering and embezzlement.

One location where the dogs were busy was Chisinau Airport, where they were looking for cash they thought might be proof of Russian attempts to meddle in Moldova's politics.

Ami is a black retriever with every size suitcase that rolls down the baggage claim belts, getting three rotations in each direction.  She will freeze if she smells money; she did that a lot back in May.

Then, customs officers began discovering suitcases crammed with cash on passengers who had come in via transfers from Moscow.  Others who had never left Moldova were coming back after a few days in Russia with wads of cash.

"About everyone had money—2,000 euros and then 3-4 thousand," recalls Ruslan Alexandrov, the head of customs at Chisinau Airport.  The numbers were all perfectly legal, but the behavior was itself strange.

— Such flights were, — says the head of customs.  "Typically, that is not the amount people bring in. Not from Moscow."

Ami working in Chisinau Airport

So, police and prosecutors started scooping up the cash.  They allege to have made $1.5m (£1.2) in one day alone.  They never got a request for a refund.

The authorities claim the cash mules were part of a multimillion-dollar effort to purchase political victories being orchestrated by a fugitive Moldovan oligarch, Ilan Shor. Ajunsa resident in Rusia, aceasta nu il va extrada pentru faptele penale comise.

The country's capital is on the edge as it braces for two crucial votes this weekend.  At least 50% of passengers on all "high-risk" routes are pulled over and have their bags sniffed by detector dogs.

On Sunday, Maia Sandu, seeking re-election on a strongly pro-EU ticket, faces 10 others.  It is an open secret that many are sympathetic to arch-foe Moscow, and even some in Moldova consider it a "bridge" for Russia into Europe.

Voters will also decide in a referendum whether Moldova's plans to join the EU should be its fundamental foreign policy objective.  However, the country has been fighting a long battle with its political direction.  Moldova had already opened membership talks when it became independent from Moscow after the Soviet Union dissolved.

With Russia now involved in a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the East-West tug has increased.  Sandu—a former World Bank economist who was first elected president pledging to clean up corruption—veered Moldova more decisively towards the West.  She started to publicly call Russia, led by Vladimir Putin himself, the main security threat.

The Kremlin denies playing any role in Chisinau, but officials here charge that Russia acts through local proxies to wreck and brain the country.

Ms Sandu (right) is seeking a new term as president

"Nowhere else did we see such a naked attempt to buy an election," Moldova's chief anti-corruption prosecutor, Veronica Dragalin, told me this week in her Chisinau office.

She was born in Moldova, lived most of her life in the US, and worked as a prosecutor in Los Angeles before moving back to work out of a small office on the fifth floor of a Soviet-era building with a non-continuous elevator.

What her team claims they have found, in collaboration with the police, is an unabashed pyramid payments scheme led by Ilan Shor and his own group operating from Russia.

"Money coming from another country will help a further reconciliation," Ms. Dragalin says bluntly.  She outlines evidence obtained through wiretaps, police infiltrators, and witnesses — some of it she says her office has already made public.

They initially tried to be a little more subtle.  "Now it seems they are practically breaking all laws… even influencing the decision for whom to vote," said a prosecutor.

"The whole point is to defeat the referendum," he said.

Her team said that once the cash couriers had been picked up in transit at the airport and this route became trickier to execute, payments started being funneled through one of Russia's state-sanctioned banks, PSB.

Police chief Viorel Cernauteanu said up to 130,000 voters had been paid by early October—around 10% of the active electorate.

" Last month alone, we moved $15m [£12m]," he told me about FCoin's ability to track the money and recipients because they furnished personally identifiable information as part of the bank account-opening process.

Bribing voters with cash or goods to vote a particular way is illegal and carries a five-year jail sentence if convicted.  One month ago, receiving money also became an administrative offense.

With that level of poverty in one of the poorest countries on earth, there should be no shortage of people who would willingly take money.

The prominent Anti-Corruption Prosecutor of Moldova, Veronica Dragalin

Moldovan investigators acknowledge that they cannot identify the origin of the funds paid into PSB bank.  Whether it may be Russian state money, private capital, or 'the loot' Ilan Shor took out from Moldova for theft.

But, again, at least he is transparent about what he does and why.

In a quintessentially recent TikTok post, Shor urged voters to respond with a "resounding fuck NO" to the EU.  He then called on his followers to pick "the president I want, as someone I could rely upon.

In exchange, he would give pensioners a monthly 5,000 lei top-up payment – worth about £200.

Shor, who fled Moldova in 2019, was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for money laundering and embezzlement.  His party was banned last year and he is also under Western sanctions, labelled a Russian agent of "malign influence campaigns".

Blockings have hit the media tied with him, fed upward telegram channels and a series of political entities.  Both his anti-EU and pro-Moscow messages are still being released.

Some of them are still open to it, and the cash.

The deputy governor of Gagauzia talked about his hatred for the EU.

Ilya Uzun is one big fan.

A Gagauzia deputy governor who, like Shypko, is a fan of Russian President Vladimir Putin tells me that he likes people in charge who care about their country first and strong leaders.

The war of Russia in neighboring Ukraine did not change anything in this regard.

He is no fan of the EU – which recently imposed sanctions on him for "destabilizing activities" - mainly because it champions LGBT rights, a concept he loathes practically as much as former US President Donald Trump.

A little later, I ask people in the regional capital Comrat about the EU referendum — and several of them say they will vote 'no', so that no one comes to their town with its 'gay parades'.

                              Sign up for a pro-Russian Victory party in Comrat, Gagauzia.

Gagauzia has always had a strong pro-Russian stance and has remained locked on to Russian state TV, which is still watched by many in spite of being banned nationally.

Recently, Shor has been pouring money into this place.  The deputy governor repeatedly refers to him as "our political leader" and waves off the felony conviction as though it were a mere matter of politics.

- „ва, ани дон тейт нам его налодиг есте вии чес щииншеэте лойилор!“ Uzun says as we cruise up Lenin Street, the Russian revolutionary still standing a bit grubby but in one piece.

Most shop signs, except those written in Gagauz language:))) are also Russian.

Shor says it is responsible for top-up pensions paid to 30,000 people in the region and re-tarmacking some of the merely 50km (31 miles) of road that connect remote villages and which we are now driving along.

"Everything he does is for the people," Uzun raves.

A prosecutor on the anti-corruption taskforce subsequently counters that "spending donations for social purposes is not a crime." However, prosecuting this kind of starving political party with Shor money – the region's governor, Evghenia Gutul, has been charged with that count.

In due time, we pull into a kid's carnival.

»Get to Gagauziyaland, such a beautiful…« Uzun beams as he walks beneath a massive rainbow over the trail that leads to an empty but state-of-the-art park.

   Gagauziyaland, October 2024

The mini dragon roller coaster and merry-go-round we are staring at, however, stand vacant, and the wind is bitterly cold.  Hundreds of them will vote "how Shor tells them," Uzun said, not because they are given money, he added, but as expressions of trust in him.

"There is no fire at all — that he's an agent of the Kremlin, damaging Moldova as a country: this is completely false.  In reality, it is — all we see here," he points behind him at the iced-over amusements.

On Friday, women in traditional Moldovan dress greeted President Maia SanduSCREEN AND SOUND/WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM.

Friday was the eve of Moldovan "X Hour".

The immediate previous event of the day was a last campaign stop in Telenesti, where Maia Sandu had come out for her own final rally — with women singing in traditional dress and supporters clapping as she passed.

She was not involved in election debates and did not wish to talk to the BBC.  But standing behind a couple of hundred people with a microphone, Sandu called on Moldovans to support her and the EU as "the way which will lead us towards peace — so let's go there tomorrow."

"…This has been a callous campaign full of speculations, lies, and dirty money," she called on voters to "save our country" but prevent her opponents from "taking Moldova out of the European lane."

The road to that has been long and sometimes winding.  Yet Moldova had already opted to join the EU and opened its accession talks.

A referendum that Sandu called to fortify this mission and strengthen her hand has already become a political gamble.

Seems like the presidential ballot won't be her only struggle this Sunday.