Moldova MPs to Vote on Anti-Graft 'Magnitsky Act'

A group of opposition deputies has drafted new legislation to combat money-laundering after the parliamentary majority voted last Thursday to pass a fiscal reform package which has sparked criticism, particularly from Moldova's Western partners and donors, for loopholes that could allow the legalisation of criminally-acquired funds.

Moldova has suffered in recent years from the 'grand theft' of $1 billion from the country's banking system, most of it in November 2014.

Moldova was also named as a country involved in the 'Russian Laundromat scheme' which laundered about $20 billion through the country's corrupt judicial system.

The 'Russian Laundromat' is reported to have been the biggest money-laundering operation in the last decade in Eastern Europe, and involved Russian companies, offshore companies, banks from Russia, Latvia and Moldova, proxies of the Russian secret services and organised crime figures, functioning from 2010 to 2014.

The planned new legislation is a Moldovan version of the US Magnitsky Act, named after Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was jailed and died in 2009 after revealing large-scale corruption involving members of the Russian government.

"The transactions [in the Russian Laundromat scheme] involved companies registered in obscure jurisdictions and economic agents from Russia. The purpose of the bill is to create legal instruments to protect both the domestic banking and financial system from abuses," said Liberal Democrat MP Tudor Deliu.

He added that the law will also impose restrictions on people who commit acts of corruption and human rights violations in Moldova.

"We hope that there will be no parliamentary faction in Moldova that will directly oppose the measures to prevent corruption...