Shor Party

Fugitive and convicted Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor announced on Monday the creation of a new political bloc to replace the Shor Party he previously led but which was recently declared unconstitutional by Moldova's Constitutional Court judges and outlawed.

The new governor of the pro-Russian autonomous region of Gagauzia, Evghenia Gutul, publicly thanked her supporters on Tuesday after the Court of Appeal in the region's main city Comrat decided the previous evening to validate the results of the May 14 elections for the position of bashkan (governor).

Moldovan anti-corruption prosecutors on Sunday raided the offices of the pro-Russian Ilan Shor Party in the southern autonomous region of Gagauzia, suspecting they have used illegal means to solicit votes for the party's candidate, Evghenia Gutul, in elections for the post of governor.

The Central Electoral Commission in Moldova, CEC, has sanctioned the Ilan Shor Party, depriving it of the right to receive allocations from the state budget for the first six months of this year.

Igor Grosu, the Prime Minister-designate proposed by Moldova's pro-Western President, failed to receive the votes needed to invest his cabinet on Thursday due to a lack of quorum in the parliament.

Grosu said the pro-European Action and Solidarity Party, PAS, which he leads, is still ready to assume responsibility "to manage the pandemic crisis and early parliamentary elections".

Moldova's pro-Western President Maia Sandu stepped deeper into an all-out confrontation with parliament on Thursday when she rejected its nomination of a new prime minister - and again put forward a rival candidate with no support among MPs.

The US embassy in Moldova reacted angrily on Thursday after the Moldovan parliament cancelled the sale of the former Republican Stadium in Chisinau intended for a new US embassy.

Moldova's General Prosecutor, Alexandr Stoianoglo, on Monday said the fugitive tycoon Vlad Plahotniuc, the former leader of the Democratic Party, PD, had illegally got hold of 100 million US dollars from the banking system.

Support in the Moldovan parliament for Prime Minister Ion Chicu's coalition government is slipping away, as the Socialist Party, PSRM, and its Democratic Party, PD, allies now only hold 54 of the 101 seats in the legislature - a majority of three.

The leader of opposition Action and Solidarity Party in Moldova, Maia Sandu, on Tuesday in Bucharest asked Romania to help investigate the "grand theft" of a billion US dollars from Moldova's banking system between 2011 and 2014, on the grounds that Romania was one of the destinations for the stolen cash.