Moldovan Prime Minister candidate from Sandu’s pro-Western party denies links to Ivanishvili
Alexandru Munteanu, the candidate for Moldovan Prime Minister put forth by pro-EU President Maia Sandu, has denied reports of his links to Georgian Dream’s founder and billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili. After Sandu’s Action and Solidarity (PAS) party announced it would nominate Munteanu on Tuesday, journalists noted that his name had appeared in connection with Ivanishvili in the leaked Panama Papers.
The EU-friendly PAS party secured a decisive victory in parliamentary elections at the end of September, and since then, has worked to form a new government.
Following the announcement on Monday that incumbent Prime Minister Dorin Recean would not seek a new term, PAS party head Igor Grosu said that Munteanu, a US-educated economist who lived and worked abroad for decades, would be the party’s nominee.
Shortly after, Moldovan journalist Paula Erizanu noted that Munteanu ‘seems to have done business’ with Ivanishvili, highlighting several instances in which both individuals appeared together in the well-known trove of leaked documents known as the Panama Papers.
On Tuesday, Munteanu responded to the allegations, writing on Facebook that he would answer ‘all questions, including the fact that I did not know, nor had any interaction or partnership with the concerned politician’, referring to Ivanishvili.
‘Moreover, a company's presence in the Panama/Pandora Papers documents simply indicates that it was registered in a jurisdiction with a special fiscal regime — a legal practice frequently used in international investments’.
Munteanu also acknowledged that he has mostly not been in the public eye and ‘understands the need to provide society as much transparency and information as possible’.
Other Moldovan politicians echoed Munteanu’s argument, suggesting that the controversy that erupted around his forthcoming nomination is mostly due to him being an unknown figure.
Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the US, voiced support for Munteanu, saying he would be ‘the best candidate to lead [the] Moldovan Cabinet’.
As of publication, the reported connections between Munteanu and Ivanishvili have not been widely covered in Georgia.
OC Media
