Moldovan police explain how Russia meddled in recent polls

Late on the evening of October 20, shortly after polls for the presidential election and EU referendum across Moldova had closed, a stony-faced President Maia Sandu briefly addressed reporters.

There had been, she said, an "unprecedented assault on freedom and democracy in our country."

Moldova's pro-Western president went on to say that fraud in the election and referendum had happened on an "unprecedented scale" and that attempts had been made to buy up to 300,000 votes.

Sandu spoke for just 90 seconds and left without taking any questions.

Opinion polls got it wrong

At this point in time, it was becoming apparent that Sandu would be the clear winner in the first round of the presidential election.

It was also clear that her predominantly pro-Russian opponents had received considerably more votes than opinion polls had indicated.

As for the results of the EU referendum, it looked at the time of the president's brief press conference as if opinion polls had been way off the mark: Early results suggested that a clear majority of Moldovan voters had rejected the government's plans to enshrine its ambition to join the EU in the constitution.

The next morning, however, things looked very different. Thanks to votes from the Moldovan diaspora, the pro-EU camp had managed to turn things around, winning by a razor-thin majority. Nevertheless, the final result differed greatly from poll predictions.

Is Moldova deeply divided, or were votes bought?

Over the past nine days, election observers have been asking themselves whether the pro-EU/pro-Russia divide in Moldova is much deeper than anticipated or whether the results of the election really were, as Sandu claimed, the result of unprecedented electoral fraud.

The Moldovan police presented the results of their investigations to the public at the end of last week.

Senior police officials stated that manipulation had played a major role in the outcome of the two polls, and that the fraud was unprecedented not just in terms of its scale, but also in terms of the methods used, which have never been seen before in Europe.

Russian bank app used for payments

According to the country's chief of police, Viorel Cernauteanu, a criminal group with links to the Israeli-born Moldovan businessman Ilan Shor, who now lives in Russia, has since April involved about 138,000 Moldovan citizens in a network that sought to buy election votes.

Accounts at the Russian Promsvyazbank (PSB) were opened for these 138,000 people. PSB, which was once a privately owned bank but has been state-owned since 2018, is considered the bank of the Russian armaments industry and was subject to Western sanctions even before Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine.

Moldovan citizens were able to use a PSB app to access money paid into their PSB accounts, in return for their votes and the votes of their relatives.

The police said individuals received the equivalent of about €100 ($108) for a vote in favor of a pro-Russian candidate in the presidential election or a vote against Moldova's ambition to join the EU in the referendum.

Cash payments also used

Money was also paid out by hundreds of so-called "local coordinators," who were tasked with verifying whether the people in their respective group had indeed cast their votes the way they had promised.

The voters in question could provide evidence of their vote by taking a photo of their ballot paper in the polling booth.

The Moldovan police have recorded about 1.4 million transactions using the PSB app by people living in Moldova since April. Most of the money — approximately $39 million (€36 million) in total — was transferred to PSB accounts belonging to Moldovan citizens in the weeks running up to the election and the referendum.

It's estimated that in addition to the 138,000 people who are known to have used the app, a further two to four other people per user were involved — most of whom were family members of the user.

The number of app users alone accounts for more than 10% of the people who cast their vote inside Moldova — that is, not members of the Moldovan diaspora.

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Police Chief Cernauteanu stated unequivocally that "the election corruption campaign was organized by members of Ilan Shor's criminal organization."

Shor, who fled to Israel in 2019, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for his leading role in what became known in Moldova as the "theft of the century," where approximately €1 billion was stolen from Moldova's banking system by means of a complex lending structure between 2012 and 2014.

Shor moved from Israel to Russia in early 2024. He has been sanctioned by both the US and the EU, and an Interpol warrant has been issued for his arrest. Russia refuses to extradite him.

Shor still politically active from abroad

Despite fleeing Moldova, Shor is still politically active in the small, former Soviet republic. His first party, the Sor (Shor) Party, was banned in 2023, as were other parties subsequently founded by the fugitive businessman.

Shor has been bankrolling anti-European campaigns for years, and has paid people to take part in pro-Russia protests in Moldova.

He was also jointly responsible for a number of huge disinformation campaigns in the run-up to the recent vote. One of the narratives peddled in these campaigns was that EU integration would mean that Moldova would be dragged by NATO into a war against Russia.

When did the authorities discover the fraud scheme?

According to Moldovan police, important technical details about the election fraud were only discovered by investigators a few days before the election. There are, however, doubts as to whether this was really the case.

After all, President Sandu herself said on the day after the election that the judiciary had not done enough to prevent the fraud. She implied that widespread corruption was responsible for the fact that such election interference was even possible in the first place.

Prosecutor-General Ion Munteanu went one step further, accusing the Russian secret services of having developed the mechanism used to buy votes using the PSB app.

Munteanu went on to say that experts and specialists from Moldova who had previously worked as "police officers, judges, public prosecutors and lawyers" had helped establish the mechanism across the country.

Election runoff on November 3

The country will go to the polls again on Sunday for the presidential election runoff.

Sandu remains the favorite to win, as she was in the first round. Nevertheless, her opponent in round two, Alexandr Stoianoglo, could get the votes of other candidates who didn't poll as well as he did, meaning it could turn out to be a very tight race.

Stoianoglo, who came in well behind Sandu in the first round, is a former prosecutor-general who was removed from office following accusations of corruption in 2021. Stoianoglo has the backing of the pro-Russian, anti-EU Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM).

While he himself has not spoken out directly against Moldova joining the EU or for any formal alliance with Russia, he has emphasized that Chisinau should maintain close ties with Russia.

Despite all this, Sandu has so far avoided directly accusing Russia of being behind the fraud. She has only spoken of "bandits" and appears to hope this will be enough to persuade skeptical and undecided voters to back her at the ballot box on November 3.

This article was originally written in German.