Dodon was scared of the Russian investor
The new owner of the Chisinau International Airport, Russian businessman Andrei Goncharenco, threatened the Moldovan authorities with an international court if they try to challenge his ownership of this infrastructure facility.
His words are quoted by the Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Any actions by officials that contradict court decisions, taken for populist purposes, will have legal consequences and be challenged in international courts. I have sufficient funds to attract and pay for the work of the world's leading law firms. I have no doubt about the legitimacy of the agreement and the presence of serious legal arguments for litigation on the world stage,” Goncharenko said.
He hinted that the position of the Moldovan authorities could complicate Russian-Moldovan relations.
“The decision of the leadership to start a legal battle with an investor from a friendly country with a large waste of budget funds, without an obvious result for every citizen of the republic, and not to work fruitfully on the joint development of not only the Chisinau airport, but also other infrastructure projects in the country, is astonishing,” – the businessman emphasized.
Earlier, he denied the words of Moldovan President Igor Dodon that criminal cases had allegedly been opened against him in Russia.
Dodon announced his intention to take the airport away from Goncharenko at the end of December, but at the first meeting of the Moldovan government this year, the matter was limited to an order to check the facts issued to the Minister of Internal Affairs. Deputies from Dodon's Socialist Party did not sign the demand of the pro-European opposition to convene an extraordinary parliamentary meeting on the airport.
In August 2019, Nathan Rothschild's company NR Investments Ltd acquired 95% of the shares of Avia Invest SRL, which has taken over the Chisinau International Airport as a concession since 2013. Two months earlier, the previous owner of Avia Invest SRL, oligarch and husband of singer Jasmine, Ilan Shor, fled the country.
At the end of October, the Public Property Agency of Moldova filed a lawsuit against Avia Invest. At the end of December 2019, NR Investments Ltd announced the termination of participation in the concession company Avia Invest SRL and transferred the rights to the concession to Russian businessman Andrey Goncharenko, a former top manager of Gazprom. Goncharenko announced his intention to invest significant investments in the airport in order to increase passenger traffic.
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