Moldova’s Audit Court Finds 14 Billion Lei in Misstatements in Chișinău Accounts

The Chisinau City Hall and the Court of Auditors have differing assessments of the audit of the capital’s finances

The Court of Auditors identified shortcomings in the accounting of assets and the use of budget funds, as well as in the conduct of public procurement and the acceptance of works in the capital in 2025. In response, Chisinau City Hall emphasises that these are technical accounting errors, not financial losses.

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Following the audit of the capital’s municipality’s consolidated financial statements for 2025, the Court of Auditors issued an adverse opinion, highlighting that only 47 per cent of the auditors’ recommendations from the previous audit, conducted in 2022, had been implemented.

Inaccuracies and misstatements totalling 14 billion lei

According to the Chamber of Accounts’ report, the auditors identified various inaccuracies and misstatements totalling over 14 billion lei in the accounting records. This is despite the fact that, at the end of 2025, the value of public property under the management of the municipal authorities was estimated at 24.26 billion lei.

These inaccuracies include errors in the budgetary classification of expenditure, as well as in the allocation of funds to specific projects. With regard to public procurement, in some cases the plans did not correspond to the budgetary allocations for investment projects, or there were no notices published in the Public Procurement Bulletin. No annual report on the implementation of the 2025 public procurement plan was drawn up.

Some of the observations relate to the classification of road works, where major repairs were recorded as routine maintenance, as well as the absence of design and cost estimate documentation.

Shortcomings were also identified in the accounting for land plots and buildings, as well as in the management of infrastructure projects. The auditors draw attention to the undervaluation of land plots and the overvaluation of buildings; some properties have not undergone the demarcation procedure and are not registered in the Register of Immovable Property.

City Hall: these are technical errors, not losses

Olesya Pshenitskaya, Deputy Mayor of the capital, explained that the accounting irregularities are largely linked to the transfer of documentation between departments in previous years. The City Council relies on the conclusions of specialists it hires to determine the nature of the work due to a shortage of qualified staff. Furthermore, different institutions interpret expenditure in different ways.

However, these irregularities did not result in any financial loss. The City Council has taken note of all the observations and, together with fellow auditors, will draw up a plan to rectify them, she noted during a meeting of the Audit Chamber.

At the same time, Tatyana Shevchuk, Chair of the Audit Chamber, summarised that an inaccurate interpretation of the regulatory framework does not exempt officials from the need to comply with the law.

Later, the City Hall published a press release on its website stating that all responsible officials from the administration and municipal bodies had attended the Audit Chamber meeting, answered the auditors’ questions and provided clarifications.

The statement emphasises that this is not a matter of financial loss, but of technical errors in the accounts, which have either already been partially corrected or will be corrected by the accountants.

This story was translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence.The translation was also reviewed by the Logos Press editorial team.

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