Three suspects – mayor of Chioselia Rusa village of Comrat district in ATU Gagauzia, the manager of a company specialized in engineering constructions based in Chisinau municipality and his brother who is a building site chief – were arrested on suspicion that they embezzled millions of lei from the Ecological Fund, IPN reports.

According to the General Police Inspectorate, the suspects aimed to appropriate 7.23 million lei from the Ecological Fund that was allocated for implementing a local project to build the sewerage system, pumping and purification stations in Chioselia Rusa.

The three are suspected of including false data in the works acceptance documents at a time when such works weren’t performed and the indicated equipment wasn’t actually installed. They also allowed for unjustified costs that were classed as indirect costs related to the building contracts and this led to misappropriation in very larger amounts.

Also today, officers of the Special Operations Division of the National Investigations Inspectorate and anticorruption prosecutors seized documents from four mayor’s offices in southern Moldova. The investigation into this case goes on.