Fugitive pro-Russian Moldova business magnate says he is halting projects

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CHISINAU, Dec 4 (Reuters) – Fugitive Moldovan business magnate Ilan Shor, accused by authorities in the ex-Soviet state of buying votes and trying to destabilise it with Russian backing, said on Thursday he was halting all his economic projects in the country.

Shor was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison for his part in a $1 billion bank fraud in 2014.

He said earlier this week that he was withdrawing support from elected local officials aligned with his pro-Russian views, effectively pulling out of Moldovan politics. The mayors of two towns promptly resigned.

Pro-European President Maia Sandu, who is committed to securing European Union membership for Moldova by the end of the decade, accused Shor this year of overseeing a vote-buying drive in the 2024 presidential election. That vote secured Sandu a second term.

She said Shor had channelled tens of millions of euros, the equivalent of 1% of Moldova’s gross domestic product, into the country to influence the election outcome. 

Writing on Telegram on Thursday, Shor said he was closing down a network of “social stores” where consumers in one of Europe’s poorest countries bought goods at up to a 30% discount.

“Every project that closes in Moldova causes me great pain,” he wrote, saying staff in his stores were being subjected to “fines, inspections, searches, blackmail and interrogations”.

Sandu’s Party of Action and Solidarity retained its majority in parliament in an election last September, keeping her campaign for EU membership on track.

Shor, who lives in exile in Moscow, last year founded the “Victory” opposition political bloc after a party bearing his name was banned.

He sought to build his popularity by promising large investments, including an airport that was never built, in Moldova’s Gagauzia region, populated mainly by ethnic Turks who are generally sympathetic to Russia.

Moldovan authorities sentenced the elected head of the Gagauzia region, Evghenia Gutul, to seven years in prison in August on charges of illegally funding Shor’s party.

(Reporting by Alexander Tanas; Writing by Ron Popeski; Editing by Paul Simao)