CHISINAU, Moldova, March 12 -- A former defense minister has been arrested on suspicion of defrauding the government of $10 million in the sale of military aircraft to the United States, prosecutors said Saturday.
Valeriu Pasat, who also served as Moldova's spy chief until 2002, was detained Friday after he arrived in the capital from Moscow, where he is an adviser to the Russian company Unified Energy Systems.
Pasat was to be held for three days on suspicion that he pocketed $10 million of the state's money in the sale of 21 MiG-29 fighter jets to the United States in 1997, according to a statement from Valeriu Gorbulea, the deputy prosecutor.
Anatoly Chubais, chief executive officer for Unified Energy Systems, called on Pasat to be freed, the Russian Interfax news agency said. Chubais spoke to Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin about the case and hired local lawyers.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said in a televised comment that the Russian Embassy in Moldova is seeking information about Pasat's arrest, because he is "a high-level official at a major company that belongs to the state."
In Moscow, about 100 people, many of them Moldovan citizens, protested outside the country's embassy, holding posters and shouting slogans defending Pasat and calling for Voronin to resign.
Relations between Russia and Moldova, a former Soviet republic, have become strained in recent months. In Moldovan elections last week, pro-Western communists won 56 seats in the 101-seat parliament.
