Vasile Costiuc, chairman of the Democrația Acasă faction, spoke about the reasons why the country was included in the list:
“For more than a decade we have been on the blacklist of an important international organization because of the numerous violations committed by vessels flying the Moldovan flag. I will give you some examples to let you know: drug interception in 2018-2019, fire and explosion in Beirut in 2020 – Moldovan-flagged vessel, transportation of weapons in 2019, detention of a vessel in Italy in 2019. All these cases led to us being on this list.”
The director of the Maritime Agency, Igor Zaharia, confirmed the fact of the criminal cases and that Moldova cooperates with competent international structures on these cases.
“Both the Maritime Agency and law enforcement agencies cooperate with Interpol and the coast guards of the countries that carried out the arrests, because international conventions stipulate that on the high seas, the coastal state can board a ship only with the consent of the flag state. Moldova has always been as open as possible – one of the most open. Both then and now, all vessels that are registered pass through a filter. At the moment Moldova is involved in various initiatives related to the fight against illegal transportation of goods and control of vessels or economic agents subject to international sanctions. Work is underway… Indeed, criminal cases have been initiated on these episodes. What is their outcome – I can’t say yet,” Zaharia said.
Mircea Pasqualuta, State Secretary of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Regional Development, confirmed the existence of criminal cases:
“The cases are indeed open, colleagues are cooperating. We need to realize that these issues go beyond the national framework, they are at the international level.”
According to the Deputy Speaker of the Parliament Vlad Batrîncea, until now, the society learned about these facts only from the international media.
“It is from the international press that we learn about many cases when goods are transported under the Moldovan flag that have nothing to do with our country or with the goods allowed to be transported”.
As Logos Press previously wrote, the Director of the Maritime Agency Igor Zaharia stated earlier that the main reason for the delay in the process of Moldova’s withdrawal from the “black list” of the Paris Memorandum on maritime security is the lack of personnel and low salaries of the agency’s specialists.
A roadmap of necessary measures was approved in April this year, but events are developing slowly due to insufficient financial resources. In the spring of next year, the authorities promise to present the first report on how Moldova is getting off the Paris Memorandum blacklist, which it was placed on in 2018 due to a large number of violations discovered during inspections of vessels flying its flag and frequent ship delays.
