From waiter to billionaire with unbridled luxury/Lulzim Basha hides expensive villas

9 Prill 2021, 12:08, English CNA

During the election campaign for the April 25 parliamentary elections, the leader of the Democratic Party, Lulzim Basha, is going from city to city, meeting citizens, and talking about the poverty and the contrast with the luxury cars of the government officials.

In this way he contradicts himself, as he doesn?t lack luxury cars, villas and other dizzying assets. Basha, who talks about the poverty of most Albanians, doesn?t know how much wealth he really has. He talks about ruining the economy, while his family lives in luxury, while his brother-in-law adds businesses from year to year.

So he goes out and deceives the public, at a time when his family is adding his wealth. Lulzim Basha was elected mayor of Tirana during the years 2011-2015, and from 2013 he is the chairman of the Democratic Party and MP from 2005 until February 2019.

In 2015, Basha admitted in a TV show that his fortune is over 1 million euros, and that it was created before he entered politics. But this is a lie. He owns a villa in the Netherlands, has mansions in the name of his father-in-law in Vlora, has several apartments in Tirana, villas on the coast, villas in Farka, and lots of other real estate.

Referring to his wealth declarations received from HIDAA, from a waiter in Rinas Airport and a translator in Kosovo, Basha has become a billionaire. In addition to villas and apartments he also owns diamonds, or expensive paintings.

From the moment he got involved in politics and until now, Basha has never made transparency about the creation of his wealth. CNA.al has analyzed in detail the declaration of wealth of Lulzim Basha, deposited in HIDAACI.

In 2005, at the time when Basha joined the Democratic Party, he declared a house in the Netherlands worth 300.000 euros, 2 luxury apartments in Tirana, 1 apartment in Durrës, a Mercedes-Benz vehicle worth 72.000 euros, 1 painting worth 6.500 euros, a watch worth 5.200 euros, diamond ring 11.500 euros, Chinese dish service 6.800 euros, and shares on the stock exchange at a value of 18.000 euros.
Basha was only 31 years old at the time he created this dizzying fortune. In 2007, he reports that he sold the apartment in the Netherlands for 250.000 euros, and a year later sold the apartment in Durrës worth 45.000 euros. In 2008, he bought an apartment in Qerret where he paid only a part, the amount of 40.000 euros.

In 2012, his wife Aurela Basha, sold an apartment in Tirana, where he owned 25 percent of it, worth 10.450.000 Lek. While in his declaration of wealth of 2014, Basha says that he has benefited about 1.5 million Lek per year from working as mayor of Tirana, but also a salary provided by the Netherlands of 26.000 euros, as the head of the EWCP program. Then in 2015 Basha left office, and further in 2017 when he returned to the Assembly, there is no change in wealth. In 2018, in the statement submitted to HIDAACI, Basha declared an amount of 1.335.462 Lek income from salary, and about 535.000 Lek as payment for fuel and telephone.

So while 2018 has been for him a year with relatively low income, this cannot be said about his wife, Aurela Basha. That year she earned about 55.000 euros, mainly as program director at the EWCP. Earlier, CNA.al reported that Lulzim Basha had taken a villa in ?Long Hill?, a resort built by businessman Agron Papuli, called an oligarch and denounced dozens of times by the DP leader himself.
We recall that in October 2019, Basha moved from his apartment on the 12th floor, near the towers to ?Qemal Stafa?, in the villa complex ?Long Hill?, on the outskirts of Tirana with the justification of damage from the earthquake of September of that year.

CNA.al also reported that Lulzim Basha stayed at the villas of another oligarch in Lalzi Bay. It is about the luxury resort ?Valamar? of Samir Mane, a place where Basha was seen landing and staying in a luxury villa. Lulzim Basha, whose fortune is enigmatic, is the producer of a series of scandals.

We remember the time when he was Minister of Transport with the 200 million euro scandal on Nation Road. When he was Foreign Minister with the scandal of the division of territorial waters with Greece, an agreement overturned by the Constitutional Court, or even when he was Minister of Interior on January 21, 2011, when the Republic Guard with his direct responsibility killed 4 people after a protest of the Socialists against Ilir Meta.

During these years, when these scandals were also registered, Lulzim Basha was paid with the taxes of the citizens, and his wealth was increased by 200 million Lek from the huge salaries in the institutions where he headed. Revenues have also benefited from DP funds, almost 10 million Lek.
Even the income of his wife Aurela Basha, has been dizzying, increasing the wealth by almost 400.000 euros, as she declares herself from working as a director in a foreign organization, where she has been paid from 11.000 euros minimum and up to 49.512 euros per year./CNA.al

https://www.cna.al/2021/04/09/nga-kamarier-ne-miliarder-me-luks-te-shfrenuar-lulzim-basha-fsheh-vilat-e-shtrenjta/