President Voronin on the cover of a magazine.
Two key persons from the BIOTEX-company: Albert Mann (L) and Nicola Colucci (R). Photo: Stefan Candea.
The Poverty ’empire’ of the presidential family
Scoop-supported reporters have exposed how the Moldovan president Vladimir Voronin and his family use their political power to become rich as well.
Posted August 7, 2009
By Irina Codrean, Vitalie Calugareanu, Dumitru LAZUR and Stefan Candea
In Moldova Vladimir Voronin 2001 entered the Presidential Office as a ‘proletarian’, but will go out as a millionaire when his term in office ends. During the last eight years, Vladimir Voronin, his wife and their children Oleg and Valentina became fabulously rich, gathering an impressive collection of houses, appartments and plots of land. Some of them were obtained free of charge or for derisory prices, with the tacit agreement of the authorities.
Furthermore, the head of state during five years kept secret the fact that his wife Taisia has held an important shareholding in CB FinComBank. Another example is how Oleg Voronin went into the transport business, more precisely railway transportation. Later on the major operator was pushed out of the marked, and eventually the government forced companies to import or export certain products “only by train”.
A third example is the very strong connection between Oleg Voronin and the trade in ovules and surrogate mothers called BIOTEX. The company BIOTEX is advertised on the Internet as intermediary in vitro fertilization, providing a large database on surrogate mothers. The business in mothers is administered by an Italian and a Russian German that operate in Chisinau and Kyiv. BIOTEX is also the name of a company registered in Chisinau at the same address as other companies where the president’s son Oleg Voronin works and even lives.
This journalistic investigation was financed as part of the Scoop project (through the Danish Association for Investigative Journalism – FUJ).
It was published in Moldova (Jurnal de Chisinau and Timpul), online (tens of websites republished the stories, especially the one related to BIOTEX and the surrogat mothers) and in Romania (Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism and 12 others, The Jurnalul National newspaper, radio and tv news reports.
To read the original stories please click here:
Voronin Junio goes into the railway business
The Voronins creating their family fortune
Voronin and the surrogate mothers
Please read all three stories in English here.
