Moldovan trace of African hashish: who controls one of the largest drug traffic on the way to Russia

In the eight months of 2022, 637 drug-related crimes were committed in Moldova, RT found out.

This is evidenced by the official statistics of the Moldovan Ministry of Internal Affairs.

This is 15% more than a year earlier: then 555 such crimes were recorded. 

A couple of months earlier, in June, the Moldovan authorities released other alarming data: drug trafficking on the Moldovan-Ukrainian border increased eightfold. 

“We have increased the number of drugs that are trying to transport across the border of Moldova by 700%, but we are coping,” the state secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Moldova, Sergei Diaconu, told TVR.

“This is due to the fact that Ukraine cannot control its border in the way it was done before the hostilities.” 

The issues of control over drug trafficking in Moldova in recent decades are extremely important for Russia.

On average, only the Russian drug control detects and destroys every year batches of 100-300 kg of Moldovan hashish.

Depending on the year, this is from 10 to 20% of all hashish imported into Russia.

And the total volume of drug trafficking imported from Moldova, but not tracked by the security forces, judging by the media publications, is estimated in tons annually.

Soft drugs are mainly imported, although in 2016 Europol also recorded the supply routes of Iranian heroin to Russia, passing through Moldova. 

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Borman's hashish "under the cloak" of Plahotniuc

A major supplier of hashish to Russia at least until 2019 was the Bormann criminal gang.

Its founder, Moldavian Oleg Pruteanu, nicknamed Borman, was engaged in extortion and embezzlement in Portugal, Spain and Italy in his youth, until he was imprisoned in 2004.

Freed six years later, he founded a drug cartel with his brother and other natives of Moldova and Spain, using the connections he had acquired in the Portuguese colony.

Bormann was supplied with drugs from Africa and Morocco.

Then they were transported by sea to Spain, and from there they were distributed by road across Europe by two routes: northern, through the Baltic States, and southern, through Moldova.

The Moldovan direction was used for deliveries to Russia.

In just one "walk" Bormanovtsy could transport up to 300 kg of hashish in trucks specially equipped to disguise drugs.

From 2012 to 2019, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs actively worked on the Bormann group, covering up individual parties or performers.

As a result, having received the testimony of the previously detained participants in the scheme, the Russian side managed to find the organizers and persons covering them in the Moldovan authorities and charge them, thereby striking the entire group. 

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On June 26, 2019, the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation announced that the Russian police had received evidence of the involvement of the head of the Democratic Party of Moldova, Vladimir Plahotniuc, in the supply of more than 1 ton of hashish to Russia and his connections with the Borman cartel.

RT has repeatedly talked about the oligarch Plahotniuc, who was called the “master of Moldova”: the political system of the country was under his control and the control of people close to him for a long time.

In Russia, Plahotniuc was charged under a particularly serious article - Art.

210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - in the organization of a criminal community, and also found evidence of 28 episodes of smuggling and selling drugs.

According to investigators, in 2012, Borman and his accomplices organized a meeting with Plahotniuc, at which they discussed the scale, routes and ensuring the “security” of hashish supplies.

Plahotniuc promised his patronage for a share and assured that he would solve emerging problems with Moldovan law enforcement officers.

So he began to protect the drug business. 

“In the course of the investigation, it was established that the former chairman of the Democratic Party of Moldova, Vladimir Plahotniuc, having the opportunity to influence the political situation and public authorities, using criminal methods of influencing those who oppose him, for the purpose of personal enrichment, entered into a criminal conspiracy with the leaders of organized crime of the Republic Moldova, - said the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs Irina Volk.

“No later than 2012, Vladimir Plahotniuc became one of the leaders of the criminal transnational drug syndicate and patronized its members.”

Shortly after the speech of the Russian Interior Ministry, Plahotniuc left the post of leader of the Democratic Party of Moldova, and then his country.

According to Russian and Moldovan media reports, he may have been hiding in the United States for some time.

There is no word yet on his exact whereabouts.

Old business in a new way

Meanwhile, the drug business, as follows from the latest statistics of the Moldovan security forces, continues to increase volumes.

From the Borman group, although it formally lost its top, only three people were arrested, the rest were put on the wanted list, but they successfully hide from the Russian and Moldovan security forces.

Moroccan hashish hasn’t gone anywhere either – it’s just that other people, presumably close to the current president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, began to control its traffic.

And upon closer examination, it turned out that the current environment of Sandu is in many respects the former environment of Plahotniuc.

RT made such conclusions by studying the publications of the Moldovan media, investigations of local oppositionists and talking with experts.

On October 4, 2022, oppositionist Igor Shor published an investigation about the head of the Security Council of Moldova, Dorin Recean.

RT has already written about this policy: Rechan, who previously worked as the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Moldova, since February became an adviser to President Maia Sandu on the defense industry.

In 2013, the local press convicted him of violating anti-corruption laws: Rechan continued to manage the business while holding a public post.

In September 2022, in the government circles of Moldova, they began to discuss Rechan's candidacy for the post of prime minister of the country.

Rechan is quite close to the president, Maia Sandu.

According to some reports, it was Recan who indirectly contributed to her career by offering Filat the candidacy of Maia Sandu for the post of Minister of Education in 2012.

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And now the oppositionist Shor has published data that indicates that Rechan has large undeclared income.

According to screenshots posted by Shor, Rechan owns 21 bank accounts in his home country and abroad, including in the US, UK, Austria, Lithuania and Romania.

It is known that on only two accounts the amount of his savings exceeds $ 7 million. 

“According to bank statements, $3.58 million is held in a US account and €3.7 million in a UK account,” Shor writes on his website.

According to the oppositionist, Rechan could have received this money through participation in the drug business. 

“Today we will talk about a man who, during the reign of Filat, was one of the main controllers of all drug trafficking that went through Moldova,” Shor says about Recean on his YouTube channel. 

Vladimir Filat, whom Shor is referring to, is a former prime minister of Moldova, and has faced a number of criminal charges.

It was Filat who proposed Recean's candidacy for the post of head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Filat himself owes much of his career, position in politics and personal success to Plahotniuc.

Local media have repeatedly written about this, and in 2020, Filat’s lawyer Igor Popa publicly stated that Filat and Plahotniuc are “one.” 

“He (Filat. - 

) told me that Plahotniuc promised to get him out of prison.

Filat and Plahotniuc are one, Popa said on the Moldovan Jurnal TV.

“These two… are still working together and talking on the phone.”

From the story of the lawyer and the publications of the Moldovan media, as well as - indirectly - the statements of Filat himself, it follows that the latter could not even take a step in politics without the consent of Plahotniuc.

Therefore, it is difficult to imagine that Filat appointed Recean to the post of Minister of Internal Affairs without the consent of Plahotniuc.

“If Plahotniuc had such influence, it cannot be ruled out that not a single significant candidate for key government posts passed without his approval at that time,” political scientist Alexander Dudchak notes in a conversation with RT. 

Additional proof that Recean continues Plahotniuc's line is the hardware changes.

In 2021, Alexandru Slusari, a former MP from the DA Platform, wrote on his Facebook* that Recean surrounded himself with Plahotniuc's former people and promotes them to significant positions. 

“As a result, Plahotniuc’s people are advancing, organizing the persecution of the opposition, journalists and civil society,” wrote Slusari. 

Therefore, it may turn out that Recean, who became the right hand of Maia Sandu in the power bloc, earned his millions on the drug business, established and transferred to him under the control of Vladimir Plahotniuc. 

This is evidenced, in particular, by the Moldovan opposition leader, a former supporter of the Dignity and Truth party, Valery Kirka. 

“Plahotniuc is connected with drugs both in Russia and in Europe.

The people who were next to him are connected with drugs passing through the port, says RT Kirka.

“I am sure that even now he has retained control over this business, and those people who remain surrounded by Sandu continue this business.”

Economist, political scientist Alexander Dudchak notes that the illegal cases of Plahotniuc can be continued by those people who are now at the top of the Moldovan government.

The United States is condoning them in this, Dudchak is sure, which are interested in continuing the supply of drugs to the Russian Federation.

Having sufficient tools to stop or destroy drug trafficking, the States, on the contrary, encourage its increase and direction towards the Russian Federation. 

“After the arrival of the Americans in Afghanistan, drug production there increased 40 times.

In Russia, up to 30 thousand people a year died from Afghan drugs at that time.

In the same way, they are now coming from the border with Moldova,” says Dudchak.

“Therefore, state patronage of drugs is a very likely story, given that Moldova, as a state controlled by the West, can perform such a mission as supplying drugs to Russia.”