Transparency International deems Estonia squeaky-clean, the 18th-least-corrupt country in the world. Moldova is 117th
s often switch parties, lured by rewards or threats. Then there is the party of Ilan Shor, a 31-year-old Israeli-born businessman who, as anIn 2015 Mr Shor was elected mayor of Orhei, a modest town an hour’s drive north of Chisinau, the capital. He has donated money to restore parks, repave streets and build social-housing units. Last year he opened a free amusement park called Orheiland. The town is dotted with Mr Shor’s “social stores”, offering wares at subsidised prices.
The question is where the money comes from. In 2017 a court convicted Mr Shor of playing a role in a scheme that used fake loans to Russian companies to siphon nearly $1bn from the country’s banking system in 2014. Mr Shor has appealed. He blames another oligarch, an ex-prime minister serving nine years in prison.
Ms Sandu, a former education minister revered for battling corruption in the exam system, thinks the entire political class is rotten. Though nominally rivals, “[President] Dodon and the Democratic Party are working together”, she says, blackmailing European countries into maintaining aid by threatening to turn towards Russia.nevertheless cut off most aid last summer, after Mr Nastase won Chisinau’s mayoral election only to see it annulled on flimsy grounds.
exploiting ethnic tension. But the fearmongering has less traction in this election, thinks Raimond Kaljulaid, a Centre Party. Young Russians are better integrated, and Estonian culture is doing well, with successful hip-hop artists and novelists. After a huge decline from 1991 to 2014, the population has risen for the past three years. Last year more Estonian citizens returned to the country than left.
How has Estonia avoided Moldovan-style corruption? Some believe it made better choices early on, privatising state enterprises in a more transparent fashion. Tarmo Juristo of Praxis, a think-tank, credits Scandinavian banks with establishing norms in the financial industry. But others think it may have got lucky. Lucan Way and Adam Casey, of the University of Toronto, argue that former Soviet states democratised better when they had a deep-rooted nationalist movement.
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