Avia

Moldovan authorities on Monday said they were scrapping the concession agreement for Chisinau international airport and moving to take it back into state ownership.

The Prime Minister, Ion Chicu, said the government had started the procedure of declaring the concession holder, Avia Invest, insolvent, meaning the cancellation of the agreement.

Russian billionaire Andrey Goncharenko, owner of a Gazprom subsidiary, on Tuesday, said he had given up his shares in Avia Invest, the company that has run Chisinau International Airport under a concession since 2013.

For years, the airport has been at the centre of controversies over its ownership and the legality of the concession awarded for the next 50 years.

NR Investments Ltd, a company owned by British billionaire Nat Rothschild, on Sunday said that it was pulling out of its troubled investment in the main airport in Moldova following months of disputes.

The company said it was giving up 95.95 per cent of Avia Invest, the company that run Chisinau International Airport.

More than 30 flights of the Russian airline VIM-Avia have been canceled, leaving more than 2,000 people at airports abroad, TASS reported.