Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps he is taking to support efforts by the Government of Moldova to (a) investigate and (b) prosecute allegations of official corruption in that country.

We have made clear to the Government of the Republic of Moldova that we expect it to deliver on its reform commitments as a matter of urgency. The Moldovan Government has made a moderately promising start with legislative reforms to the justice sector, and the strengthening of the banking system following the 2014 bank fraud, but these initial steps need to be underpinned by full implementation and concrete results and Moldova still has a long way to go on judicial and economic reform and fighting corruption.

The UK is providing support to judicial and economic reform and fighting corruption, including through the Good Governance Fund (GGF). Through the GGF we plan to fund up to £4.3 million worth of projects and programmes in Financial Year 16/17, including projects which focus on these areas specifically. We plan a similar allocation in Financial Year 17/18. GGF support has already helped improve the resilience of the banking and financial sectors through supervisory and regulatory reform and contributed to improving sentencing procedures for corruption crimes, by developing sentencing guidelines as well as recommendations for their application.