Criminal actors in Moldova no longer obtain political protection, and the state constrains its criminal markets more effectively than at any point since the country’s independence. But the current reforms rest on political will rather than durable institutional change.

Nearly eight years after the European Parliament passed a resolution that called Moldova ‘a state captured by oligarchic interests’, a new report from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) finds that centralized state capture has largely been broken: criminal actors no longer obtain political protection, and the state constrains its criminal markets more effectively than at any point in the post-Soviet period.

Caught in Transit: Corruption and Organized Crime in Moldova analyses how a country the European Parliament said in [2018] was held by oligarchic interests—a period in which $1 billion, some 12% of GDP, vanished from three Moldovan banks—cleaned its ranks. Author Liam O’Shea credits the government in office since 2021 with prosecuting senior figures from earlier administrations, vetting judges and prosecutors, reviving anti-corruption bodies and tightening controls on political finance. Yet, with Moldova on its third prime minister in under a year, the report also sets out how the reforms were driven through the executive rather than written into state institutions, leaving them open to reversal by a successor.

The report draws on fieldwork in Moldova in the first half of 2026, including interviews with civil society representatives, investigative journalists, academics, prosecutors, police and diplomats, alongside desk research across court records and existing literature conducted between February and July 2026.

Moldova’s overall score on GI-TOC’s 2025 Global Organized Crime Index improved from 2023 to 2025 in terms of both its criminality and resilience, against a backdrop of a global increase in criminality as resilience plateaued or backslid. ‘Moldova has taken steps to address state capture, constrain criminal actors and undermine illicit markets in recent years,’ says Liam O’Shea. ‘For this progress to be sustained; these reforms need to be anchored in institutions and oversight mechanisms that do not depend on a continuation of political will.’

The report also finds that Moldova’s reputation as a centre of organized crime overstates its role. Its domestic criminal markets are small, and its criminal actors are mostly small, loosely structured networks that play supporting roles in trades organized and financed abroad.

The country’s organized crime profile remains notable through its position on routes running from and through Ukraine towards the European Union, above all for cigarette smuggling. Other key findings include that the war has created a new market in smuggling conscription-age men out of Ukraine, while trafficking of women and girls has declined, though it remains significant. The large post-war outflow of arms from Ukraine that many anticipated has not materialized.