Russian votes are pouring into neighboring Ukraine as the country heads to the polls

Sniffer dogs at Chisinau airport have been at work in recent months, looking for money that could be evidence of Russian interference in Moldovan politics.

Ami, a black retriever, gives each suitcase rolling on the luggage straps a good sniff from all directions. If he gets cash, he will be frozen. Back in May he was doing that a lot.

It was then that customs officials began to receive large sums of money from passengers arriving on connecting flights from Moscow. People who had never traveled to Moldova before would return in a few days from Russia with lots 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 illegal but the patterns were suspicious.

“There were certain flights: Moscow-Istanbul-Chisinau, Moscow-Yerevan-Chisinau,” explained the transport manager. “Usually people don’t come in with that much money. Not from Moscow.”

So the police and prosecutors started taking money. In just one day they claim to have earned $1.5m (£1.2m). No one ever asked for their money back.

Authorities believe the money mules were part of a large and ongoing campaign to buy political influence run by the fugitive. A Moldovan oligarch named Ilan Shor. Convicted of major fraud in Chisinau, he now lives in Russia, which will not extradite him.

Ahead of two important votes this weekend, the capital’s airport is waiting. Flights from all “high risk” routes are met by sniffer dogs and at least half of the passengers are pulled over for additional baggage scans.

On Sunday, President Maia Sandu is running for re-election in the EU region, challenged by ten other candidates. Many openly sympathize with Moscow; others see Moldova as a “bridge”.

Voters will also be able to vote in a referendum on whether to enshrine Moldova’s intention to join the EU in the constitution. In fact, membership talks have begun but the country has been at war over its political structure for decades, ever since Moldova gained independence from Moscow as the Soviet Union collapsed.

That East-West tension has intensified since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. President Sandu – a former World Bank economist who was first elected on a promise to eradicate corruption – then steered Moldova more towards the West. He began openly identifying Vladimir Putin’s Russia as the biggest security threat.

The Kremlin denies that it plays any role in Chisinau politics, however officials here accuse Russia of working through proxies disrupting and destabilizing the country.

“I don’t know anywhere else where we have seen such a serious attempt to corrupt an election,” Moldova’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, Veronica Dragalin, told me this week in her office in Chisinau.

Born in Moldova, he spent most of his life in the US – most recently as a prosecutor in Los Angeles – before returning to the country with a job in a small office on the fifth floor of a Soviet-era apartment block with a broken elevator.

What his team uncovered, in cooperation with the police, was a pyramid scheme run apparently from Russia by Ilan Shor and his group.

“We are talking about a foreign country that sends money in an effort to influence the election,” explained Ms. Dragalin. He describes evidence obtained by phone calls, police intrusions and witnesses – some of which his office created.

“At first they tried to make it look legitimate. Now it’s like they’re showing off all the rules… [and] there was a clear impact on the voting decision,” said the prosecutor.

“The main goal is for the referendum to fail.”

According to his team, when money couriers were found at the airport and the route became more difficult, payments began to be sent through the authorized Russian bank, PSB.

As of early October, about 130,000 voters have received payment through the program – about 10% of active voters, according to Viorel Cernauteanu, the police chief.

“In September alone, $15m (£12m) was transferred,” he told me, explaining how they could trace the funds to the recipients because they had provided personal information to open a bank account.

Giving money or goods in return for votes is a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. Last month, a new law made it an administrative offense to accept money, too.

But in one of Europe’s poorest countries it’s not hard to find willing cash acceptors.

Moldovan investigators admit that they cannot identify the source of the money paid to the PSB bank – whether it was Russian state money, private money or cash that Ilan Shor was convicted of stealing in Moldova.

But he himself is open about his actions and intentions.

In a recent regular post on TikTok, Shor called for a “strong NO” to the EU. He then urged the supporters to choose “the president I decide on, someone I can work with”.

He then offered to pay a pension of 5,000 Moldovan lei, or about £200.

Shor fled Moldova in 2019 and was later convicted in absentia of money laundering and fraud. Last year, his group was banned and he is also under Western sanctions, accused of “bad influence campaigns” in Russia.

Media companies linked to him, Telegram channels and various political parties have all been shut down. But his message – anti-EU, pro-Moscow – continues.

Some always accept that, along with money.

Ilya Uzun is a big fan.

The deputy governor of Gagauzia, a small autonomous region in the south of Moldova, also pays tribute to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He tells me that is because he likes strong leaders who he thinks “put their country first”.

Russia’s war on neighboring Ukraine has not changed that outcome.

He admires former US President Donald Trump for the same reason, while his disdain for the EU – which recently put him under sanctions for “degrading activities” – focuses more on LGBT rights, which he fiercely opposes.

Later, when I asked passers-by in the regional capital Comrat about the EU referendum, many replied that they would vote “no” to prevent “gay protests” in their city.

Pro-Russian views and Kremlin-led media have been strong in Gagauzia, where many still watch Russian state TV channels despite a national ban.

Lately, Shor has been investing heavily here. The deputy governor repeatedly refers to him as “our political leader” and dismisses the criminal sentence as if it were political.

“Try and say a bad word here about Ilan Shor and people will spit on you!”, said Uzun as we drove down Lenin Street past a statue of the Russian revolutionary, gaunt but still intact.

Most shop signs, those not in the local Gagauz language, are in Russian.

I hear how Shor is paying pensions to 30,000 people in the region and re-installing about 50 km (31 miles) of roads between remote villages, which we see.

“Everything he does is for the people,” Uzun enthused.

The anti-corruption prosecutor later clarified that using donations to spend public money is not a crime. But sending Shor’s money to political parties is a crime – and the boss of Uzun, the governor of the region Evghenia Gutul, was charged with that.

After a while we board the children’s playground.

“Look at Gagauziyaland, it’s beautiful!” Uzun shines, leading the way under a giant rainbow into a deserted but brand new park.

The air is very cold and the mini dragon roller-coaster and merry-go-round we see are both standing empty and motionless. But Uzun insists that the people of Gagauzia will vote “how Shor tells them” – not for money, but because they trust him.

“All the talk, that he is an arm of the Kremlin, disturbing Moldova: that is not true. This is the truth: what you see here,” he waved towards the frozen field.

On Friday, Moldova’s election campaign reached its climax.

Maia Sandu was met at her last rally in the small town of Terenesti, where women in traditional clothes sang and fans clapped as she passed.

He did not take part in the election debates and did not want to speak to the BBC. But speaking to several hundred people through a microphone, Sandu urged Moldovans to vote for him and the EU as the best way to peace.

“This has been a very difficult campaign with a lot of lies and dirty money,” he told them, asking voters to “move our country off a dangerous path” and prevent his opponents from “misleading Moldova on its European path”.

That path has been difficult for many years, with many obstacles. Nevertheless, Moldova had already chosen and opened accession negotiations with the EU.

Now the referendum that Sandu started in an attempt to strengthen that goal and strengthen his support has turned into a dangerous political move.

It seems that the presidential vote is not the only vote he has to worry about on Sunday.