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Alexandru Munteanu, the newly appointed prime minister of the Republic of Moldova, has a résumé that makes diplomats swoon: founder of the American Chamber of Commerce, French cultural ambassador, and Wall Street-style investor with an impeccable suit and better connections.
At 61, Munteanu just landed the top job in Moldova, but there is just one problem: he knows where all of Ukraine’s bodies are buried. Literally and figuratively.
The man with two faces
For twenty years, Alexandru Munteanu didn’t just do business in Ukraine — he lived inside its economic bloodstream. He saw the money flows, the corrupt deals, the weak points in the system. He was there during the oligarch wars, the revolutions, and the backroom arrangements that kept the lights on and ensured the right people were paid off.
Now he’s the prime minister of the country next door, and nobody seems worried about what he learned.
Within hours of his nomination, investigative journalists dropped a bombshell: possible ties to Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov through murky economic dealings. Munteanu brushed it off with the smoothness of someone who’s deflected more complex questions at boardroom tables from Kyiv to Chișinău. “Grey economic zones,” he called it—nothing to see here. Move along.
But start pulling on that thread, and the sweater unravels fast.
Alexandru Munteanu and his government before the appointment vote in parliament. Photo: Alexandru Munteanu, social media.
The security firm nobody wants to talk about
In a recent TV interview, Munteanu casually mentioned he owns two Ukrainian businesses. The first — a higiene paper company — is boring enough to make you yawn.
The second one he didn’t call, just mentioned, that it is related to security. In accordance with the Ukrainian open data monitoring service, the company related to Munteanu is Venbest, one of Ukraine’s largest private security firms, with 2,500 armed employees, 566 patrol vehicles, and operations in 20 regions. It’s the kind of company that knows which buildings matter, where the cameras point, and who’s paying for protection.
Munteanu claims he’s no longer officially listed as owner. However, in the interview, he admits that he still has control over it.
Let that sink in: Moldova’s new Prime Minister is a beneficiary of a Ukrainian security empire while sitting in the Prime Minister’s chair.
Friends in low places
Venbest’s partners read like the greatest hits of Ukraine’s corrupt past.
For 15 years, Venbest has operated as a strategic partner with Yavir-2000, Ukraine’s other major private security firm. Together they created 566 joint rapid-response groups, coordinate operations across 22 regions, and make business decisions jointly — this according to their own description in a 2024 Forbes Ukraine interview.
So when Yavir-2000 spent years installing and maintaining thousands of Russian TRASSIR surveillance cameras—systems that transmitted footage directly to Moscow servers with FSB connections — it wasn’t happening in isolation. These were partners sharing strategy, resources, and clients across Ukraine’s security sector.
The Yavir-2000 surveillance operation was massive: Radio Svoboda’s December 2023 investigation documented Russian cameras at Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, throughout Poltava’s “Safe City” system, and at countless private businesses.
The footage was routed through Moscow servers owned by companies serving Russia’s FSB. Ukrainian authorities only moved to block access after the February 2022 invasion—meaning for years, a company deeply partnered with Munteanu’s Venbest was potentially feeding Ukrainian intelligence to Moscow.
Munteanu’s business partners? Former officials from Viktor Yanukovych’s government, the kleptocracy that sparked Ukraine’s 2014 revolution.
Heorgii Tupchii, Venbest’s Ukrainian co-owner, has been identified as a business partner of Valerii Pysarenko—a former MP from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions who voted for the “dictator laws” in January 2014 that sparked mass protests.
The business connection runs through a Cypriot offshore company that formally controls Venbest, with the same nominee directors appearing in both men’s corporate structures.
Tupchii also has reported connections to Viktor Ratushniak, who served as deputy minister in Yanukovych’s Interior Ministry from 2010-2014, overseeing the very security sector where Tupchii built his empire.
These aren’t the kind of people you accidentally end up in business with. These are the networks you navigate when you spend 20 years building a Ukrainian business empire.
These allegations surfaced during a 2023 business dispute after Venbest lost a government contract to competitor Sheriff. Take that context into account—but also note what’s independently verifiable: the Cypriot corporate structures linking Tupchii and Pysarenko, and Pysarenko’s documented voting record.
When Ukraine’s reformers attempted to clean up government contracts, the backlash was swift and coordinated—media attacks, criminal investigations opened within 24 hours, pressure through former law enforcement connections.
This is the business world Munteanu chose to navigate. And now he’s prime minister.
The ultimate insider threat
Here’s what makes Munteanu dangerous: He’s not some Russian spy or principal bad actor. He’s the ultimate insider — someone who spent two decades learning exactly how Ukraine works, where it’s vulnerable, and how to exploit those weaknesses.
He facilitated major business deals. He moved money across borders. He identified which officials could be bribed and which institutions could be influenced. He built a network that stretches from Kyiv boardrooms to Moldovan ministries, and who knows where else.
Now imagine handing that knowledge to the prime minister of a country that shares a 1,200-km border with Ukraine, has its own Russian separatist problem, and sits at the crossroads of East-West power games.
Moldova on a map
The beautiful lie
Western capitals are celebrating Munteanu as a technocrat, a reformer, someone who understands both Ukraine and Moldova and can build bridges between them.
But what if the bridge goes both ways? What if the man who knows all of Ukraine’s secrets, who built businesses on connections to corrupt officials, who still controls a massive security operation, isn’t the ally everyone thinks he is?
Moldova just handed its government to someone who knows precisely where Ukraine is weakest. He speaks the language of Western reform while keeping one hand on a security empire and the other on investment networks that span the former Soviet space.
Call him a prime minister if you want. But Alexandru Munteanu is something far more interesting—and far more dangerous: He’s the man who knows too much, wearing a diplomatic smile. The question isn’t whether he’ll use what he knows. The question is: for whom?
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