“I have never seen such brazen and overt attempts to corrupt elections anywhere else,” Veronica Dragalin, Moldova’s anti-corruption prosecutor, said this week from her office in Chisinau.
Born in Moldova, she spent most of her life in the United States, most recently working as a prosecutor in Los Angeles before returning home to work in a small office on the fifth floor of a Soviet-era block with a broken elevator.
What her team uncovered, working with police, was a pyramid payment scheme run openly in Russia by Ilan Shor and his group.
“We are talking about foreign countries sending money to influence elections,” Mr. Dragalin explained. She details evidence obtained through wiretaps, police raiders and witnesses, some of which was made public by her office.
“At first we tried to make it seem legitimate. Now they are blatantly flaunting all the laws… (And) that would be the equivalent of publicly influencing voting decisions,” the prosecutor says.
“The primary goal is to fail the referendum.”
According to her team, when cash couriers were detected at the airport, making the route more difficult, payments began to be made through PSB, a licensed Russian bank.
By early October, as many as 130,000 voters had received payments through the scheme, according to police chief Viorel Cernauteanu. This represents about 10% of active voters.
“In September alone, $15 million (£12 million) was transferred,” he said, explaining how funds and recipients could be traced because personal information was provided to open a bank account.
Offering money or valuables in exchange for a vote is a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. Last month, a new law was enacted that makes accepting money an administrative offense.
But in one of Europe’s poorest countries, it’s not difficult to find someone willing to accept cash.
