2.3 Overview of Organized Crime in Moldova

government officials, law enforcement agencies, managers of State-Owned Enterprises, and politically connected individuals and companies. State budget losses due to corruption, fraud and contraband schemes have been significant. Following the Euromaidan protests in 2014, preventing and fighting corruption became a national priority, and independent investigative, prosecutorial, and judicial institutions were established. As a result of the reforms, the number of convictions for high-level corruption has increased despite political pressure and undue interference.18 The heads of two key agencies (the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and Specialised Anti-corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) were appointed in a transparent process, though in 2019 and 2020, there were reports of interference in their activities and attempts to undermine their investigations, including efforts to remove the director of NABU. A major accomplishment in the fight against corruption was adopting an anti-oligarchic law in late 2021 that introduced a legal definition for an oligarch and made it a requirement for public officials to declare relations with them. Among other aspects, the law also forbade oligarchs from financing political parties or participating in privatisations.19 In recent years, there were other successful initiatives, most notably the establishment of an e-procurement system, ProZorro, which transferred all major public tenders to a transparent online system; and the electronic asset declaration system of public servants, which enabled transparency over government officials’ assets and earnings. Nevertheless, Ukraine’s pre-conflict progress against corruption was limited, as reflected in the Transparency International perception index and World Bank’s governance indicators mentioned above.

2.3 OVERVIEW OF ORGANIZED CRIME IN MOLDOVA

Organized crime is a significant issue for Moldova. In 2017, the World Bank ranked Moldova 94th out of 137 countries with respect to combating organized crime.20 Located on the very edge of the European Union, Moldova’s geographical location is attractive to international organized crime groups wishing to smuggle illicit products between Europe and Asia. The principal criminal activities in Moldova are corruption, tax evasion, illicit drug trafficking, human trafficking, tobacco smuggling and the smuggling of illicit goods. Other organized criminal offences in recent years include counterfeiting, environmental crime, murder, and kidnapping.21