Before turning his face to politics, Ilan Shor was a prospering businessman, largely thanks to the economic empire inherited from his father Miron Shor. His main businesses included duty-free shops and clandestine acquisitions of buildings from the Moldovan Confederation of Trade Unions.

In April through November 2014 Mr. Shor acted as chairman of the managing board of the Banca de Economii (BEM) following a complex financial operation that had turned the Government from a majority shareholder into a minority one. Mr. Shor also controlled many shareholders in the Banca Sociala and Unibank, according to the first Kroll Investigation Report. His position facilitated the fraud since its beginning in 2012 till the culmination of theft in 2014. The three banks have been cleared of around one billion US dollars.

While under house arrest and questioned by prosecutors about his role in the fraud and money laundering, in May 2015 Mr. Shor obtained his registration papers for local elections and won the mayor’s job in the city of Orhei; he represented the Ravnopravye Party which he later re-baptized after his own name, the Shor Party. The campaign allowed Mr. Shor to escape the house arrest and pursue a political career.

During the official enquiry into the fraud, Ilan Shor testified against himself by claming he had bribed the Liberal Democratic Prime Minister Vladimir Filat for 250 million dollars in return for [unspecified] services. His testimony played a major role in landing Mr. Filat in jail for nine years.

Ilan Shor also testified against Veaceslav Platon, a controversial businessman with dual citizenship. He told prosecutors that acting in a deceptive way Mr. Platon had persuaded him to give 48 million euros in loans in 2014, via three of his firms while Mr. Shor was in charge with BEM.

On 21 June 2017, Shor himself was sentenced by a first instance court to seven years and six months in prison, for money laundering and causing of material damage by deception or abuse of trust in the same case "Theft of the Century". However, since the sentence is not enforceable, Shor signed up for the February 2019 parliamentary race and even received a certificate of integrity issued by the National Integrity Authority.

At the parliamentary elections, he run on the uninominal constituency no. 18 - Orhei municipality, where he came in first. In the legislature he became the president of the faction of the party that bears his name. But after the new alliance between the Socialists and the deputies of the ACUM Bloc appointed the leadership of the Parliament and invested the executive in the lead with Maia Sandu, thus landing the democrats from the government, Shor fled Republic of Moldova.

Later, the prosecutor's office notified that he "illegally crossed the state border, circumventing customs and border control", and the Cahul Court of Appeal, the court that examines the fraud and money laundering case in which Shor is accused, issued an arrest warrant on his behalf and announced him as a wanted person.