On 23 June, Ungheni District Council put three property complexes up for auction. Two sold, for 840,000 lei. For the third — the largest — not a single applicant registered.
The sale notice did not say what the buildings actually were. The document that put them up for auction does — in brackets.
Three former health facilities
The council’s February decision, by which the district launched the procedure, describes the properties precisely:
- at Curtoaia, commune of Condrătești — “the former family doctors’ office”, 233.1 m² and 0.1089 ha of land;
- at Cornești, 80 Ștefan cel Mare și Sfânt Street — “the former physiotherapy block”, 206.3 m²;
- at Bușila — “the former hospital”: six buildings, 767.6 m² in all, plus 4,045 m² of land.
The procedure did not even start on the district’s own initiative. The council “takes note of the applications received” — that is, someone had asked to buy.
What went under the hammer
| Lot | Valuation | Starting price | Applications | Sold for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Curtoaia — the former medical office | 72,334 lei | 120,000 | 3 | 340,000 lei |
| Cornești — the former physiotherapy block | 211,702 lei | 400,000 | 2 | 500,000 lei |
| Bușila — the former hospital | 336,964 lei | 400,000 | — | no applicant |
The smallest lot fetched 4.7 times its valuation
Curtoaia is the story of the day. The valuers of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry set its market value at 72,334 lei. The council put it up at 120,000. It sold for 340,000 — 4.7 times the valuation and 2.83 times the starting price.
That is 1,459 lei per square metre of floor space — for a building in a village.
The readiest explanation is competition: three applications, and the lowest entry threshold of the three lots. When bidding opens at 120,000, there is room to climb. The other possible explanation is that the valuation was far below the market. But the Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s valuation reports are not public, nor are they attached to the acts in the register.
For comparison: at Cornești the valuers put 1,026 lei per square metre of construction, and at Curtoaia — 310. Three times less, for buildings of almost equal size.
The former hospital may fall to half its price
Bușila was the most expensive lot and, at the same time, the closest to its valuation: the starting price of 400,000 was only 19% above the market value. The others were put up at 66% and 89% above their valuations respectively.
Nobody came.
The government’s auction regulation says what follows. The Commission draws up “the minutes of the void auction”. After two outcry auctions, the price may be cut by 5% — but not below the market value, so not below 336,964 lei. And assets left unwanted after two outcry auctions may be moved to a descending-price auction, where, says point 24 of the regulation, “the price reduction may continue down to 50 per cent of the exposure price”.
Translated: the former hospital at Bușila may lawfully reach 200,000 lei. Six buildings and forty ares of land.
As of 14 July, we found no notice of a repeat auction on the District Council’s channels.
Who decided — and an abstention that is not one
In February, when the district launched the procedure, the decision passed with 33 votes in favour and none against.
In May, when the same properties were moved from the public into the private domain and declared “liable to privatisation”, the vote changed: 28 in favour, 1 against. The sole vote against was that of councillor Oxana Stîngu.
The same decision empowered the district president, Dionisie Ternovschi, to set up the auction commission, run the auction and sign the sale contracts. The starting prices were set not by the council but by the commission.
And on that commission sits — alongside Ternovschi and its secretary, Serghei Mutu, head of the Land Relations and Cadastre Service — Oxana Stîngu herself, the councillor who had voted against the sale.
A legal question, not an accusation
The law on the administration and denationalisation of public property contains a provision worth putting on the table. Article 52 states that the inclusion in a complex of immovable property of assets in the field of healthcare is done “with the prior written consent of the central specialist public authority” — that is, the Ministry of Health.
All three lots are former health facilities. Decision 3/10 expressly invokes article 52. Yet no published act mentions any prior written consent of the Ministry of Health.
We put this as a question, not a verdict: by the May decision, the assets had already been moved into the district’s private domain, with the cadastral designation “public and administrative building”. A lawyer would have something to argue about. We merely note that, in the public record, the consent does not appear.
What is not public
Who bought. The statement gives the number of applications — three at Curtoaia, two at Cornești — but not the names of the winners. Neither the contracts nor the minutes of the auction have been published.
What they were actually worth. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s valuation reports, on which the starting prices were built, are attached to no act in the register.
Where the money goes. The regulation says that the proceeds from privatising district property go into the district budget, and that the seller retains 5% for privatisation expenses — some 42,000 lei out of the 840,000. In the draft district budget amendments published in July we did not identify a distinct revenue line from the sale of public property.
The payment deadline has already passed
The buyers have, under the regulation, 20 days from the signing of the minutes in which to pay. For the auction of 23 June, that deadline fell around 13 July.
If the money has not come in, the results may be annulled — and for district property the annulment is made by a decision of the council, which would bring the matter back onto the agenda. The contract, in turn, is concluded within seven days of payment.
The next sitting of the District Council will show which of the two happened.