Vladimir Andronachi is part of the inner circle of Vladimir Plahotniuc and his political career is entirely linked to the oligarch. The two had their names spelled in a criminal dossier for arms trafficking which Romanian prosecutors filed against Viktor But, the famous Russian arms dealer.
Mr. Andronachi made it to Parliament on the Moldovan Democratic Party (PDM) candidate lists in 2015 and in spite of holding a public job he has tried hard to keep a low profile. He secured a new seat after the February 2019 elections, again thanks to PDM lists.
In the past, he had worked for a number of companies including Nobil Air SRL, a firm controlled by Mr. Plahotniuc that provided charter services for current President Igor Dodon, Transnistrian oligarch Victor Gusan, and former Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev.
In a complaint tabled by controversial Moldovan banker Veaceslav Platon before the Romanian Division for Investigation of Organized Crime and Terror, Mr. Andronachi is mentioned as a representative of OTIV Prime Holding, a Dutch company owned by Vladimir Plahotniuc. In 2011, OTIV Prime Holding sold to Platon’s middlemen a part of its businesses in Moldova, among them a 27% share in Victoriabank.
In August 2020, Andronachi left the Democratic Party faction and declared himself an unaffiliated MP. He announced, however, that he would support the parliamentary majority, made up of the Socialist Party and the Democratic Party. On the same day, Democrats announced that they had expelled Vladimir Andronachi from the party.
He ends his activity as a legislator after the snap parliamentary elections of July 2021, in which he does not run.
In the summer of 2021, RISE Moldova wrote that two offshore companies with similar names in the tax haven of Belize had received one million euros from the "Missing Billion". The companies created on the east coast of Central America were, at that time, controlled by Vladimir Andronachi.
In October 2021, Andronachi was indicted in the "Bank Fraud" case. The politician is being investigated for fraud and money laundering, both of which were committed in extremely large proportions and in the interest of an organized criminal group.
At the same time, an arrest warrant was issued for the former MP and was announced in international search.
A year later, on 2 November 2022, the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office announced the detention of the ex-parliamentarian. It happened after Andronachi, who was in Ukraine at the time, was declared undesirable and expelled from the neighboring country.