[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.