Hundreds of thousands of Moldovan citizens living in Russia cannot send bank transfers back home

Chisinau is looking for ways to re-enable money transfers between Moldova and Russia while complying with Western sanctions, Prime Minister Dorin Recean has said.

Hundreds of thousands of Moldovan citizens are employed in Russia. In September, the last remaining avenue for Moldovans to transfer money from their Russian bank accounts back to Moldova was cut off, when the ‘Gold Crown’ payment system fell under US sanctions.

In an interview with Moldova’s Exclusiv TV on Friday, Recean stressed that Chisinau is complying with international and US sanctions, and not banning payments on its own initiative.

“On the contrary, the government is looking for opportunities for our citizens who are in Russia to send money to Moldova. And vice versa, those who live in Moldova could transfer money to Russia,” he said.

“These are our citizens, even if they’re in Russia,” the prime minister added.

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Asked why only two polling stations were provided for the nearly 500,000 Moldovans living in Russia during the recent Moldovan presidential election – which also included a vote regarding EU integration – he blamed the Ukraine conflict and security.

“It’s not that we were restricting anything,” Recean said, explaining that it simply wasn’t possible to provide the same security as was afforded Moldovans voting from Western countries. “European partners” helped with the security and integrity of the polling abroad, he said.

Incumbent President Maia Sandu won in the second round of the Moldovan election earlier this month. Earlier, Chisinau announced that its EU referendum passed with a razor-thin margin of less than one percent. The victory was supposedly secured at the last minute with the votes of pro-EU Moldovans living abroad, while the initial vote count indicated strong opposition.

Last year, Chisinau announced it would take part in the sanctions against Moscow as part of its ongoing accession talks with the EU, which Moscow has denounced as a “hostile step” by a government “entirely integrated into the anti-Russian campaign in the West.”

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Moldova under Sandu has taken a sharply pro-Western course since she came to power in 2020.