[credit_guy]

Not the GP, but probably the "complicated" part is that the Moldovan prosecutors would not be able to shut down an illegal factory in Transnistria, which is de facto independent. The fact that the workers were from Transnistria probably provided them some type of immunity for a while. It's quite unlikely that the factory and the operation itself was really unknown. It's more likely that for political reasons, the authorities needed to turn a blind eye to it. What exactly changed now, who knows? It's complicated ...

[FpUser]

The factory was on on Moldova's territory. Why would "authorities need to turn a blind eye to it" is beyond my comprehension. What kind of "political reasons"? That is unless they were simply paid off and are regular crooks.

Got any proof of that? It looks more like you just being "creative"

[credit_guy]

Indeed, I don't have proof. As I said, I was not the original poster, I was just exercising a bit of critical thinking.

Now, I started reading a bit into this. What I got so far is this: the authorities kept an eye on this operation for a few months. They arrested the main guys, who indeed reside on the other side of the river. These guys claim to be some sort of "inventors" who were simply experimenting with these helicopters and trying to overcome some technical obstacles. They say what they are doing on their property should not be anyone's business: they were indeed assembling helicopters, but did not sell yet anything. Given that, the authorities claim that the illegal things they did now include flying the helicopters for short periods of time without permission to fly, and bringing in the country various technical components without proper custom declarations (they had entire engines there, which they sourced from some engine manufacturers). If it comes to these types of arguments, the whole case does not appear so slam dunk.

The Transnistria angle, I'm not sure if there was one. There could be a faint one, in the fact that the prosecutors did not want to arrest some resident of Transistria without a watertight case, so that's why they waited for months. Now some people claim they messed up anyway.