ANI declaration scandal raises questions over Comrat official
Sergei Chernev, head of the State Chancellery office in Comrat, is alleged to have headed the commercial company ATS-KUM from February 2025 until September 2026 without declaring it in his 2025 statement of income and personal interests, while anti-corruption bodies appear to have turned a blind eye.
According to publicly available data, from February 2025 to September 2026 the sole founder and administrator of ATS-KUM was a certain Chernev Sergei, the same man who heads the State Chancellery office in Comrat. The company, registered in Vulcănești, is engaged in the extraction of sand, gravel, clay and kaolin.
That timeline matters. Chernev took office on 6 February 2025 and, according to the same public data, became linked to ATS-KUM that same month. When he later filed his “Declaration of Income and Personal Interests” for 2025, the company should therefore have appeared in the document.
Instead, there is no mention at all that Sergei Chernev owned or administered ATS-KUM. The information is absent both from the section on income from commercial activity and from the section on ownership stakes in share capital.
The official modestly “forgot” that he owned a company – one that, incidentally, is currently suing the Vulcănești Mayor’s Office over a land plot. Conflict of interest? Almost certainly.
Law provides sanctions, but Chernev remains in office
Such cases are provided for in Moldovan legislation. Under the law, an official found to have falsified a declaration must correct the discrepancies within one month. In other words, anti-corruption bodies check the data, identify the falsehood and start the clock.
After that, the guilty official must be dismissed and entered in the register of persons barred from holding public office for up to three years. Yet Chernev is still working. He has been in office since 6 February 2025 and, apparently, has no intention of going anywhere.
Moreover, shortly before this information became public in September 2026, the company was hastily re-registered in the name of the official’s wife. This is a classic method of avoiding responsibility: formally, “I am no longer the owner”.
The situation is made especially cynical by the fact that Chernev is known as a fierce critic of Ilan Shor and the “corrupt” authorities of Gagauzia. Speaking publicly, he demanded that candidates for the Central Electoral Commission of Gagauzia undergo vetting: checks for integrity, possible criminal records and undeclared income.
Now it turns out that he himself is alleged to have concealed commercial activity from the state for 19 months: from February 2025, when he became linked to ATS-KUM, until September 2026, when the company was reportedly transferred to his wife. Yet for almost two years Chernev somehow failed to notice the beam in his own eye.
Anti-corruption bodies remain silent
The same can be said of the bodies that are supposed to check public servants for corruption and conflicts of interest. The National Integrity Authority (ANI), the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (APO), the National Anti-Corruption Centre (CNA), PCCOCS and PACCO are all silent alongside Chernev deafeningly and very revealingly.
The question raised by this ANI declaration scandal is simple. If an official who demanded “vetting” for others allegedly managed for 19 months to run a company without declaring it, who in Moldova is actually checking declarations? And how?
Why, then, has the government multiplied all these institutions if their practical effect is zero?
