Bendery, 16 May. /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. Today, President Yevgeny Shevchuk held a surgery on personal matters in Bendery. Citizens addressed the president on the problems of receiving education, credit arrangements with commercial banks, expressed their views on the city's appearance. The longest conversation the president had with employees of Bendery's Elektroapparatura plant, against which bankruptcy proceedings have been commenced.
In 2009 the plant began to accumulate salary debts to its employees. It started operating erratically. At a certain stage, Elektroapparatura leased out its premises to other legal entity which conducted their industrial activities with the involvement of Elektroapparatura's employees. Besides, it worked on a tolling basis, which means it received raw materials from the customer and processed them into finished products which were later resold by the customer itself.
As a result, in 2012 the Investigation Committee launched a criminal case, the first in the series, for non-payment of salary, when the sum of debts amounted to 3 million roubles. On the whole, law enforcers have instituted seven criminal cases against Elektroapparatura. However, almost all of them were closed or discontinued on various grounds, connected, first of all, with the peculiarities of the Prednistrovian criminal legislation. Thus, among principal reasons for closing criminal cases or refusal to institute criminal proceedings were, according to representatives of law enforcement agencies and the PMR's prosecutor Alexander Deli, who were also present, expiry of the statute of limitations and absence of the event of a crime. As a result of the only criminal case heard at the court of law, the plant's director general was exempted from punishment in connection with expiry of the statute of limitations.
As for today, the considerable part of indebtedness to plant employees has not been repaid. Bankruptcy proceedings have been commenced against the plant.
In such cases the enterprise's debts are cleared at the expanse of selling out its property. According to estimates by the current bankruptcy supervisor, if the plant's production facilities are sold out at their depreciation value, there will be enough funds to repay the debts to all employees. But the equipment employed at Elektroapparatura is rather narrowly targeted; therefore, it is very difficult to find a buyer. Selling engineering tools as scrap metal, that's what plant representatives suggested at today's meeting, will not suffice to cover even a part of the salary debts.
In addition, besides wages, Elektroapparatura did not pay contributions to the Unified State Fund of Social Security for some time, which means that plant workers' employment history will not be taken into consideration until the indebtedness to the fund is cleared. In this connection, plant employees requested the president to pay off the enterprise's tax and salary debts at the government's expanse.
Yevgeny Shevchuk noted that taking such a step is not possible as there are a number of other enterprises in the similar situation, let alone medium and small businesses.
The responsibility over the enterprise lies with its proprietor, and moreover a third or fourth proprietor. First, the labour collective was the proprietor, according to the documents. Then the collective assigned the enterprise to a legal entity. And then came some other companies," said the president.
Yevgeny Shevchuk has instructed law enforcement agencies to review the materials of the case to bring guilty persons to account.
«The Investigation Committee, together with the Interior Ministry and the Department of Economic Crimes, will establish a joint group to check once again all the materials and what else can be done with these materials. This group should make a decision at last and give a legal treatment to the offences," the president told the leaders of law enforcement agencies.
However, according to the president, within the existing legal framework, the probability of guilty persons coming before the court is still rather low.
«The Investigation Committee does not write laws. The Investigation Committee fulfils its functions within the framework of the criminal procedure and penal codes. If there is the article, it will prosecute; if there isn't, they can't do that," Yevgeny Shevchuk told enterprise workers.
To avoid the recurrence of such situations, the president has instructed the Ministry of Economic Development and the Minister of Justice to draft all necessary amendments to the current laws, including increasing the employer's responsibility for non-payment of wages, extending the corpus delicti and limitations of this offence. At the same time, according to Yevgeniy Shevchuk, their approval or rejection depends on the Supreme Council anyway. For instance, a draft law abolishing or extending limitations on a number of offences has been rejected by the parliament four times. Other bills extending authorities' powers have come to nothing as well.
