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Voronin clan trying to usurp Moldova’s richest man’s business

March 16, 2009
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The Timpul [Time] newspaper of Chisinau maintains Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin, his family and his surrounding are trying to take over the ownership of the businesses belonging to Anatol Stati, Head of the ASCOM Group, who is reputed to be the richest man in Moldova.

On Friday, Timpul published the letter, which Vladimir Voronin sent to President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev in October 2008. In it, Voronin informed his Kazakhstan colleague that Anatol Stati had concealed incomes from the businesses he had run in Romania and Turkmenistan, and now he is claiming himself to be a foreign investor in Kazakhstan.

Voronin highlighted one fact, which he believes deserves a special attention: Stati is using the incomes, earned on the mineral wealth of Kazakhstan [oil and gas], for investing in territories that are under international organizations’ (including the United Nations’) sanctions – for instance in southern Sudan.

“This bloody business inflicts serious damage to the image and reputation of the country, letting him to earn money, and to the country this man of business stems from”, wrote Vladimir Voronin, who accused Anatol State of his interference into Moldova’s personnel and foreign policies lately.

The newspaper wrote that the letter is very hard to perceive as a message from one head of state to another one, and that this message will one day become a bright example of betrayal of national interests, and that by this letter Voronin is placing both himself and whole Moldova in a very awkward situation.

“The Moldovan President’s letter had a concrete target – the ASCOM S.A. Industrial-Financial Group headed by Anatol Stati. The objective was set quite clearly: annihilation of the financial force, which, in Voronin’s imagination, may be financing the Moldovan opposition”, Timpul wrote.

The newspaper maintains it disposes of information that President Voronin’s Economic Adviser Oleg Reidman together with businessman Vladimir Plahotniuk – “the hero of many press articles proving his ties with Oleg Voronin [the President’s son]” – visited Kazakhstan in late 2008, “where they were supposed to fulfill Vladimir Voronin’s direct order – to destabilize the ASCOM’s activities and to eventually lay a firm grip on the business, which Anatol Stati built up for so many years”.

Timpul further held that after the two gentlemen’s trip to Kazakhstan, ASCOM started to suffer pressure. It was subjected to various checks by Kazakhstan controlling organs, but no violations of law were revealed in Stati’s activities.

The paper remarked that ASCOM is highly reputed in both Kazakhstan and Sudan, for the company has helped resolve many economic and social problems in these countries. And, finally, Timpul reminded to whom it may concern that Sudan has been under no UN sanctions for quite long now.

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