The mayor of Calarasi, Ion Olari, the president of Calarasi district, Stefan Bolea, and the head of the construction department of the district council, Veaceslav Stratan, were released from house arrest under judicial control by the courts in May. The three are being investigated in a criminal case concerning corruption in the district council of Calarasi, according to a response of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office (Ap) to ZdG.

The mayor of Calarasi, Ion Olari, was detained, along with the president of Calarasi district, Stefan Bolea, and Veaceslav Stratan, head of a directorate in the Calarasi district council, on the morning of January 31, 2023, by National Anti-Corruption Centre (NAC) officers and AP prosecutors in several cases initiated on corruption. Thus, according to the case materials, they are suspected of fraud in public procurement and other abuses, committed during 2022. On 2 February this year, the investigating judge of the Ciocana court in Chisinau decided to remand Olari in custody for 20 days. Five months after their detention, the three were released under judicial control.

Ziarul de Gardă reported on how public money brought together Ștefan Bolea, the Socialist president of Calarasi district, Ion Olari, the mayor of Calarasi, a representative of the Action and Solidarity Party, and Veaceslav Stratan, the head of the construction department of the district council, who was also a councillor elected on the Democratic Party list in a locality in the district.

In recent years, the three, who have been targeted in several corruption cases, have worked together to “implement” several projects in the district. In April 2022, one of the family firms of the mayor of Calarasi obtained, without a tender, the right to build a room for the storage of a medical waste incinerator. The price for a square metre, paid from the district budget for an unfinished building on the outside, exceeded the price of a turnkey apartment in Chisinau.

Socialist Bolea and PAS representative Olari, together with democrat Stratan, also collaborated in the process of repairing the roof of a building in Calarasi that has been inoperative for more than a decade. The work was carried out by a district councillor’s firm, while other councillors blamed the lack of transparency and the inappropriateness of repairing the roof of a dilapidated building.