Integrity

Six years at the Customs Service: businesses and properties of Balitchi family

Tudor Balitchi, head of the Customs Service of the Republic of Moldova lives in an apartment of 200 square meters, registered on his sister’s name. In recent years, his sister, established in the US and his mother, a doctor by profession, now retired, have become owners of more plots for construction worth millions of lei and placed at the outskirts of Chisinau. Also, Balitchi’ s mother together with the director of the Factory Rogob founded in 2015 a company that has declared activities in construction. Tudor Balitchi and his wife are also the founders of companies, although the Law on customs service forbids «exercising a business activity personally or through a third part " and obliges him to "convey trust management on his quota (shares) in the statutory fund of the commercial organization to another person during his mandate at the customs service".

Tudor Balitchi has the longest mandate of head at the Customs Service in its history.  He was appointed head of the Customs Service in December 2009 and in less than two months he will turn six years since he has been leading this institution. Balitchi, 38, was born in 1977 in Tiraspol. He studied at the Faculty of Law at the Free International University of Moldova, specialty of constitutional and administrative law (1994-1999). Three years later, he passed his master’s paper at the same specialty. He started his professional career as a lawyer at the Intellectual Property Agency (1999-2000). A year later, he is legal consultant at USAID, under the privatization project against financial means and development of real estate values IBICI. From 2000 to 2009, before he was appointed head of the Customs Service, he has been chairman of the Supervisory Board and head of the Administrative and Financial-Economic Directorate of SA "IPTEH". On July 25, 2012, the day when he turned 35, Nicolae Timofti awarded him the rank of major-general following a request of the PM of that period Vlad Filat. Vlad Filat worked with Balitchi before he was appointed head of the Customs Service.

The property from the income statement of the Head of the Customs Service

Since he has been leading this institution, Balitchi drew the attention of public opinion  on his “modest” declarations on incomes and properties. For example, in the 2012 statement, Balitchi showed an annual income from salaries amounted at 148 thousands lei, 2 plots, one plot of land with fruit trees and a garden with a cadastral value of just 40 thousands lei, a flat bought in 1995 with a total surface of 61,7 square meters, a non-residential facility of 1.7 square meters worth 1,500 lei, accounts estimated at 10 thousand Euros and assets in four companies, which, under the same statement, did not bring any revenues.

His latest statement on property, for 2014 contains more consistent data but seems to be "modest".  The Head of the Customs Service got married for the second time in November 2013 and included in the 2014 statement, in addition to that from 2012, an apartment of 64 square meters purchased in 2014, four plots of land, of which 2 gardens and 2 unproductive plots of land purchased  during 2014-2015, all of them with a cadastral value of about 160 thousand lei,  and a car Toyota RAV 4, made in 2010, bought in 2013, with a value of 2000 Euros "based on the document certifying the origin". Also, Balitchi said that he sold his shares of a SRL against 2340 lei and his wife sold the shares of a company and got 92500 lei. Also, he gained 703,000 lei from shares of social capital of a SRL. Balitchi family claims that they got a sum of 6750 Euros from rental of a real estate. Regarding companies, the number remained the same like in 2012, but we found out that he renounced on some of them and others new were founded by his wife.

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