Russian Billionaire Quits Ownership of Moldovan Airport

Under pressure from the government and president in Moldova – who have long eyed the airport concession with deep suspicion – the Russian billionaire owner of the company managing Chisinau airport has pulled out.

People waiting to visit an old plane at the Chisinau International Air Show 2018, held to mark Civil Aviation Day in Moldova, September 22, 2018. Photo: EPA/Doru Dumitru

Russian billionaire Andrey Goncharenko, owner of a Gazprom subsidiary, on Tuesday, said he had given up his shares in Avia Invest, the company that has run Chisinau International Airport under a concession since 2013.

For years, the airport has been at the centre of controversies over its ownership and the legality of the concession awarded for the next 50 years.

In light of official plans to create a new national company to run all the main airports of Moldova, his plans to develop the business had now lost relevance, he said.

Goncharenko insisted that in selling the shares, he had met all his existing obligations to the authorities of Moldova, and remained interested in further investing in the country.

In December 2019, he became the main shareholder of the Cypriot offshore company, Komaksavia Airport Invest, which owns 95 per cent of Avia Invest.

Before that, in August 2019, a company owned by British billionaire Nat Rothschild, NR Investments Ltd, bought 95 per cent of the company running the airport.

Investigative media in Moldova wrote that the local business tycoon Ilan Shor, who is now a fugitive from justice in Israel, was behind the chain of companies owning Chisinau airport.

Both President Igor Dodon and Prime Minister Ion Chicu have spoken repeatedly about the need to terminate the concession contract, and have accused Goncharenko of being a front for Shor.

“There are no investors from Russia [in the airport] and never have been,” Dodon said in an interview aired on December 24, 2019, by Radio Free Europe.

He called the Russian “a controversial person who had very close relations with … Shor, and who was several times in Chisinau until June 2019,” he added.

Dodon said that several real Russian investors were interested in investing in Chisinau airport.

On February 17, media wrote that a draft government decision, promoted by the Public Property Agency, sought the reorganisation by the merger of three state-owned enterprises that own or operate the main airports in Moldova at Balti-Leadoveni, Chisinau and Marculesti.

Goncharenko is notorious in the UK for acquiring Britain’s most expensive private home, Hanover Lodge, for 120 million pounds, as well as other prime London properties for an estimated total of 250 million pounds.