Sandu made it clear that she would approve Ukrainian sanctions against the largest Transnistrian enterprise
Prime Minister of Moldova Maia Sandu does not approve of the actions of his predecessor Pavel Filip, who in March asked Ukraine to lift sanctions on the Moldavian Metallurgical Plant (MMZ), one of the largest enterprises in Transnistria.
She stated this in an interview with the Ukrainian Radio Liberty, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“It was a surprise to us that the government wrote such a letter. This company does not pay any taxes to the budget of the Republic of Moldova. On the other hand, we know that previous governments participated in smuggling and all sorts of corruption schemes together with the Tiraspol regime. We need to figure it out, but there are big questions. We ask Kyiv to help fight smuggling and corruption schemes on the territory of Transnistria,” Sandu said.
Last summer, Ukraine imposed sanctions against MMZ, which made it impossible to supply metal scrap to Transnistria. In March 2019, the sanctions were lifted.
A month later, a campaign against the “separatist” enterprise began in the Moldovan and Ukrainian media. Journalists hinted at a corruption conspiracy between the authorities of Ukraine and Moldova.
MMZ is a competitor of the Ukrainian metallurgical enterprises of the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.
Before the introduction of sanctions in 2018, MMZ was one of the main consumers of ferrous scrap exported from Ukraine: Ukraine supplied the plant with about 80% of all exported ferrous scrap.
On July 3, the Ministry of Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons of Ukraine (MinVOT) proposed resuming the application of sanctions against the MMP.
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