However, the Ilie Catărău incident tarnished the reputation of the efficiency of Moldavian units. Ilie Catărău, a private in the Russian Army, joined the new Moldavian military units. His credentials could not be verified, as no-one at that time in Chișinău has met him in any former military unit of the Tsar, but he spoke clean Romanian, said he was from a Bessarabian village, and said he has long suffered under the Tsarist regime, therefore he was entrusted with responsibility. As soon as he got a small position, he started to call soldiers to insubordination and disorder - "Everything belongs free of charge to the working people, everything should be taken now, immediately, without waiting for laws to be drawn which would nationalize the goods and distribute them to the people". With a small group of his friends, Catărău made a group of soldiers of the Russian Army and of some Moldavian soldiers from the Chişinău Garrison, who trustfully "elected" him "Commander of Chișinău Garrison". In this quality, he started to send groups of soldiers to pillage neighboring villages and bring to Chişinău oxen, cows, horses, cattle carts, which were taken not only from the boyars, but also from peasants. These were brought to the court of the Theological Seminary in Chișinău, where Catărău waited for their peasant owners to show up, and in lieu of a payment would order to free the cattle, thus making thousands of rubles. Several times, he even entered with a dozen armed men the session hall of Sfatul Țării. As a result of numerous complains from the peasants and the MPs, on