Renato Usatîi


Renato Usatîi is a Moldovan businessman and politician, since 13 April 2014 the chairman of Our Party, a left-wing populist opposition party. In 2015, he was elected the mayor of Bălți with the support of around 72% of votes. He is a leader of the pro-Russian opposition in Moldova.
Usatîi graduated in foreign languages from the Bălți State University. In 2005 he started his own business, founding in Russia ″VPT-NN″, a company producing railway equipment. Since 2011, he was the major stakeholder of Universalbank, one of the major banks of Moldova.
In July 2014, Russian banker German Gorbuntsov accused Renato Usatîi of hiring a gunman to kill him.
On 23 October 2015 Usatîi was arrested in Chișinău and charged with illegal tampering of phone of Vlad Filat, the former prime-minister who himself was arrested for corruption charges. Usatîi confessed he indeed published the phone records but that he thinks it is a necessary measure in order to save the country from corruption. On 25 October he was released; the charges were not dismissed.
In October 2016 an national and international arrest warrant was issued by a Moldovan Court for Usatîi,. Since then Usatîi stays in Russia. As mayor of Bălți, formally he is in a business travel.
According to the last polls made in 2019 regarding the most popular politicians in the Republic of Moldova, Renato Usatîi is positioned on the ninth position and in another opinion poll it was positioned on the tenth position among the politicians which Moldovans have trusted the most.