It is the largest carrier in Moldova, with a turbulent history of reorganizations. In March 2000, under the Braghis government, Victor Topa, now ex-director of the State Administration of Civil Aviation (ASAC) (and godfather of the current leader of the Dignity and Truth Platform, Andrei Nastase), intermediated an agreement between the Moldovan government and the German company Unistar Ventures Gmbh. Under that agreement, the German side took possession of 49% of shares in the state-owned airline Air Moldova for an investment of 2.38 million dollars.
Mr. Topa was later appointed as minister of transportation - and worked as such until at the end of 2001 when the Communists sacked the entire cabinet to form one of their own. Frictions between the new authorities and the German investor about Air Moldova started immediately. At a shareholder assembly in June 2002, ASAC dismissed the director of Air Moldova and asked a court to terminate the agreement with the German company, with no compensations awarded. As Moldova illegally reversed the privatization process into nationalization, in December 2008, the European Court of Human Rights obliged Moldova to pay Unistar Ventures 6.7 million euros in damages.
Air Moldova attracted new attention in 2017-2018 as it was approaching the verge of bankruptcy, losing hundreds of millions of lei a year and facing hardship in getting new loans from banks. In the fall of 2017, the authorities provided about 90 million lei in aid to the national air carrier but it didn’t help much.
In the summer of 2018, Air Moldova was sold into private hands again, in a record time. The new owner - Civil Aviation Group SRL - paid 50 million lei for Air Moldova and assumed all of its debts. Civil Aviation Group’s founders were Romania’s low-cost Blue Air Aviation SA (49%) and two Moldovan nationals: Serghei Melnik and Andrei Ianovici - with 25.5% each.
As the Democratic Party lost the power in summer 2019, the new parliamentary majority made up of the Russia-leaning Socialist Party and pro-West ACUM bloc rushed to investigate the circumstances of privatizations under the previous rule. An inquiry commission found violations of procedures and laws in the privatization of Air Moldova and the investor’s failure to comply with its commitments.
The same summer, prosecutors launched an official probe seeking to demonstrate that the cash paid for Air Moldova had originated from a money-laundering operation. The media learned that Andrei Ianovici, one of the owners of Air Moldova, had smuggled 2.6 million euros in cash from the United Arab Emirates. The law enforcement officers were also trying to demonstrate that the money actually had come from a domestic insurer, Moldasig.
In September 2019, prosecutors obtained a sequester on the equity capital of Air Moldova (more than 300 million lei) while the air carrier was undergoing a reorganization from a joint-stock company into a limited liability company.
