Azeri investor Rafiq (also known as Rafig or Rafik) Aliyev, through one of his three project companies in Moldova, Bemol Retail, has resumed efforts to recover a €9mn award obtained in court in 2021, from Danube Logistics — the most successful of his three project companies set up in Moldova, currently operating the country’s strategic Giurgiulesti (PILG) sea port but no longer part of Aliyev’s holding.

Furthermore, Moldovan prosecutors said that they are investigating the problematic sale in 2011, by which Aliyev lost control of Danube Logistics. The reversal or invalidation of the deal would completely change the picture for the port that is expected to be a key element of the logistics chain towards Ukraine in the post-war reconstruction period. 

At prosecutors’ request in June 2022, a court seized the shares of Danube Logistics (up to €7.5mn), at that time fully owned by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), in connection to the investigations into the 2011 transaction.

In a message sent last week to President Maia Sandu and circulated by media, Bemol claims that the government of Moldova, acting in favour of a criminal organised group and the EBRD, plans to amend the 2004 investment agreement on PILG “in a way that would prevent” the recovery of its €9mn award.

The law firm hired by Bemol to investigate the case, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, invited Sandu to raise Bemol's concerns with the relevant ministries involved in a possible transaction involving the port, to ensure that the transaction does not frustrate the legal entitlement of Bemol Retail under the recovery judgement on the €9mn award. 

Long-drawn-out legal procedures may hinder the expansion of a port that Moldova urgently need to develop. Unlike 20 years ago, foreign investors' interest is significant: Romania's government has expressed interest in making Giurgiulesti part of the port infrastructure around Constanta port at Black Sea. Other international bidders are reportedly also interested.

Bemol pointed to a statement by Sandu, who a year ago admitted that “there is an ongoing litigation related to Giurgiulesti port that must be settled” before considering the takeover proposal made by the Romanian government.

The amendments implied by Bemol in October 2024 as imminent would further smooth the planned sale of the port operator to Emitel Investments FZE of Dubai, which is understood to be in contact with representatives of the government of Moldova, Bemol said.

Similar efforts were reportedly carried out in 2020 by the EBRD and Thomas Moser to convince authorities of the illegal nature of the €9mn claims (at that time not a final award) and to convince lawmakers to alter the ultimate beneficiary law such a way to separate the responsibility of Moser and Danube Logistic, according to MoldStreet. The efforts apparently failed and the political reset in Chisinau dragged the case down the public agenda.

Moser is a former EBRD banker, former vice-president of Aliyev’s Azpetrol group and former manager of Aliyev’s project companies in Moldova — at that time (since 2011-21) the final beneficiary of Danube Logistics. 

Moldova’s Supreme Court upheld Bemol’s €9mn award against Moser in a final ruling in February 2021. 

Three months later, in May 2021, EBRD took over Danube Logistic, diminishing Bemol’s hopes of recovering the €9mn award.

In October 2024, the government of Moldova refuted the allegations circulated by Bemol Retail and promised to act in full transparency.

Responding Bemol’s inquiry (the response was circulated by the media as well), prosecutors said that they are still investigating the acquisition of Danube Logistics in 2011, when Aliyev lost control of the port operator in favour of his employee Moser.

Notably, Bemol’s €9mn final award is not linked to the acquisition of Danube Logistics by Moser, but regards losses incurred by Moser to Bemol Retail in his position of manager.

The case involving the operator of Giurgiulesti port (Danube Logistics) is anything but transparent.

Danube Logistics has always been owned by offshore companies, was traded in obscure confidential transactions and its operations have been subject to regulations frequently amended by authorities without public consultations. 

The PILG has reportedly turned into a tax haven where the government lost MDL3.5bn (over €200mn) due to the preferential VAT regime alone, in the ten years to 2023, according to estimates by the county’s tax collection agency. The main resident of the port is the Trans-Oil group, controlled by businessman Vaja Jhashi.

Designed in 1995 to be developed with a $27.5mn EBRD contribution (loan and equity), the project was declared failed in 1999.

The EBRD scrapped the loan. But it returned as a partner (20%) when the project was revived in 2004, alongside Alyiev’s Azpetrol (80%). Twenty years later, the EBRD owns 100% of the operator of Moldova’s sole sea port and has implied it has nothing to do with the €9mn losses caused by Moser to Alyiev’s Bemol Retail. 

The Azeri businessman was previously stripped of his assets in Azerbaijan in 2005, when sentenced to prison for allegedly plotting against the regime. Within less than ten years, he developed the largest petroleum distribution chain in the post-Soviet country and inked with the authorities in Moldova the development of a mega-port that should have included a $250mn oil refinery.