A specialist in investigation of economic crimes and money-laundering operations, Vasile Sarco started in 2001 as an inspector at the police commissariat of the Center District in the capital. He also worked in various positions in the Center for Combating Economic Crime and Corruption - now the National Anticorruption Center (CNA) - and in the Ministry of Interior Affairs.

In December 2012 he was appointed the chief of CNA’s Anti-Money-Laundering Office, which in 2018 became an autonomous unit under the direct control of the Government and Mr. Sarco took over as its chief for a five-year term.

During his stewardship the Office for Prevention and Fight against Money Laundering launched an investigation into the so-called Russian Laundromat operation, which envisaged the illegal transfer of around 20 billion dollars from Russia to offshore accounts, and into the 2014 financial fraud, which deprived Moldova’s banking sector of one billion dollars and pushed three commercial banks to bankruptcy.

Both events are reflected in his economy doctoral paper which he defended in 2018. Titled “Enhancing the management of the operation for prevention and fight on money laundering,” Mr. Sarco’s thesis describes a variety of ways to minimize the risks of banks’ involvement in money-laundering operations or legalization of illicit revenues.

The officer says in this paper, “The fact that for around 18 months three banks of systemic importance [for Moldova] succeeded to complete a fraud of 13.3 billion lei (12% of GDP) is a genuine failure of the National Bank of Moldova as a regulator in this sector.”

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