GPI Head Reveals Details of Investigation of Fulger’s Missing Ammunition

Ammo from ammunition boxes intended for tactical exercises of the Fulger Special Forces Brigade was allegedly stolen before 2017, the head of the GPI, Viorel Cernauteanu, said in an interview. “These activities have not taken place in the last seven or eight years,” said the head of the General Police Inspectorate, who is in charge of the Fulger special police battalion, where the ammunition in one of the boxes was replaced with sand and stones, Europa Liberă reported. According to him, this ammo had not been produced since 1996 and were small-caliber used for Makarov pistols. The investigation found that the ammunition was allegedly stolen before 2017, as until then the boxes of ammunition were stored in an Interior Ministry warehouse in the center of Chisinau, which did not have the necessary security conditions to store such items. “It was a warehouse where uniforms, ammunition, cars and everything else were stored,” he said. “I can safely say that they have disappeared not from the Fulger Special Forces Brigade”, the GPI head claimed. According to Cernauteanu, it is difficult to know if anything is missing from a particular ammunition box. “They are in metal boxes, so the first box looks like a hermetically sealed tin can, then comes a wooden box and it is sealed up too,” the GPI head added. He added that the boxes of ammunition, including those with the stolen cartridges, were moved to the new Fulger warehouse, which was built after 2017 with the help of development partners and is under guard. “No one will come in here to take a box or change anything in it because [the warehouse] is constantly monitored,” the GPI chief noted. Following the incident, the Interior Ministry began a “very extensive process of checking all the ammunition in the warehouse,” Cernauteanu said, but he did not provide details on whether other similar incidents had been revealed during the inspections.