EME Parkleitsystem GmbH Austria, which won the tender contest to build paid parking places in Chisinau municipality, denies the accusations that it is a phantom company from an offshore area, IPN reports.

In a news conference on April 10, EME Parkleitsystem GmbH Austria director Zsigmond Bodnar said the firm was specially created to take part in the contest to build paid parking places in Chisinau. EME Parkleitsystem GmbH Austria is a branch of EME Holding, Kft of Hungary, which manages 97% of the parking lots in Budapest and 36 cities in Hungary. The branch was registered in Austria because the Republic of Moldova and Austria have an international investment protection treaty, which they consider very good.

The company’s representative responded to the accusations that there was no employee or something else to confirm the firm’s activity at the legal address indicated in the contact data. “You will never find someone at that legal address. The company does not have operational activity for other purposes than the project with Chisinau municipality,” stated Bodnar.

At the first stage, EME Parkleitsystem GmbH Austria intends to invest €4.5 million in setting up 25,000 parking places in Chisinau. The works were to start to April 1, 2017, but were delayed because the Chisinau Municipal Council hasn’t approved the regulations yet.

The municipality’s initiative to build paid parking places in Chisinau caused a wave of negative reactions. The investigations carried out by civic activists and municipal councilors revealed a series of obscurities and inexactitudes in the public-private partnership established by the local authorities. An activist from Chisinau went to the supposed head office in Vienna of EME Parkleitsystem GmbH, with which the Chisinau City Hall signed the contract, and found no one there, while the telephone number indicated on www.parkleitsystem.com is nonfunctional.

The authors of Sic! (a project implemented by IPN News Agency) today published an article entitled “Five dubious things said by Dorin Chirtoaca&Co about paid parking places”, which reveals a series of ambiguities and inaccuracies in the public-private partnership established by the administration of Chisinau. The authors say that though it is a good idea and a necessary thing for Chisinau, the way in which the City Hall implements it compromises the project and only worsens the problem.