The Chisinau Municipal Council’s PAS group has formally asked the Prosecutor General’s Office to investigate potential violations by City Hall officials in preparing the municipal budget. The City Hall has dismissed the allegations as “purely political”.
“In the last three months, we have seen several things that have raised big questions about how the City Hall is complying with the Law on Public Finances. For more than a month, the Chisinau City Hall has been operating on the basis of a provisional budget, a budget that has money for several important municipal programs for people, but at the same time we saw how groups with extended hours were closed, how personal salaries for assistants were reduced, and energy bill relief payments were not offered”, said Dumitru Ivanov, vice president of the PAS group.
The councilor claims that there is money in the municipal budget for all these needs, but Chisinau residents do not benefit from it, and “this amounts to a serious violation”. “For this reason, we prepared a complaint to the Prosecutor General’s Office to investigate the way the municipal budget was drawn up, because we found several violations of the Law on Public Finances. New budget lines were introduced for programs, but the law does not allow such a thing. The budget parameters were changed, several municipal programs were included that raise questions”, said Dumitru Ivanov.
The Chisinau City Hall responded by calling the allegations “purely political” and aiming to divert public attention from PAS’s own troubles nationally.
