Moldova election: Russian cash-for-votes flows into Ukraine's neighbour as nation heads to polls

Sunday's presidential election is seen as a vote on whether the country looks east to Russia or west to the EU.

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Ami, a black retriever, gives every suitcase that rolls in on the baggage claim belts a good sniff on all sides. If she detects cash, she will freeze. Back in May she was doing that a lot.

That is when customs officers began finding large amounts of money on passengers arriving via connecting flights from Moscow. People who had never left Moldova before were returning from a few days in Russia with wads of notes.

“Almost everyone had money: 2,000, 3,000, 7,000 euros”, the head of customs at Chisinau Airport, Ruslan Alexandrov, remembers. The amounts themselves were not illegal but the patterns were suspicious.

“There were certain flights: Moscow-Istanbul-Chisinau, Moscow-Yerevan-Chisinau,” the customs chief explains. “Normally people don’t come in with that much money. Not from Moscow.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c23kdjxxx1jo

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