Moldovagaz Audit Reveals Unjustified Spending of Millions of Lei

After the audit of JSC Moldovagaz, the Chamber of Accounts representatives made public all the irregularities they found with the gas supplier. According to the auditors’ report, a number of improper actions, procedures and transactions of the company’s representatives, as well as those responsible for the management of this joint-stock company, were identified in Moldovagaz. Thus, during 2011-2021, capital investments in the natural gas system were made in a total amount of about 3.6 billion lei (excluding VAT), of which 524.7 million lei by JSC Moldovagaz, and the remaining 3.1 billion lei by the companies of the natural gas transportation and distribution system, enews.md reports with reference to deschide.md. Thus, the investments of 815.8 million lei were found as unplanned, unreasonable and unjustified. ANRE accepted only investments of 2.772 billion lei, i.e. 77.3%, for reimbursement through the tariff. One of the inappropriate investments is the construction of the Moldovagaz office building at 64 Puskin Street in Chisinau. “The funds planned for the construction of this building were constantly increasing. Thus, in 2005 the Board of JSC Moldovagaz planned to allocate up to 5 million euro or about 63 million lei for the design and construction works of the building. In 2006, based on the project documentation, the approximate construction cost of 230.9 million lei with a total area of 12.7 thousand m2 was set. In 2013, the project documentation was amended, to increase the area of the building up to 13.5 thousand square meters. Finally, in 2018, the value of the produced investments amounted to 445.6 million lei. Due to the lack of original documents for the tenders held between 2011 and 2015, contracts and protocols between 2009 and 2015 regarding the construction works of the building, the external audit was limited to verification and detection of compliance of the JSC Moldovagaz’s capital investments with the set task. The financing of the building construction in 2010, 2011 and 2013 was carried out by attracting three loans worth 138 million lei, with interest of 13 million lei, as well as commissions/taxes and other payments related to the loans worth 1.4 million lei”, the auditor's report says. On the other hand, Moldovagaz JSC Board Chairman Vadim Ceban said that most of the registered discrepancies had been in place before he took office, i.e. before 2019, and some of them were already eliminated. “We have just started to solve the problems. These are problems that haven’t been solved in years. We have reviewed this report at the board level. An action plan is already in place to address all of the discrepancies with the audit team’s findings. We will implement all of the recommendations and put them into our supply, transportation and distribution processes,” Cheban said.