ARMO was dismantled for scrap, but debtors flock to KKB for blocking accounts

2023-09-08 10:29:00, Aktualitet CNA

ARMO was dismantled for scrap, but debtors flock to KKB for blocking accounts

Illustrative photo

The Albanian oil refinery, ARMO, a facility inherited from the communist period for oil processing, has been dismantled for scrap in recent years, but dozens of requests from executors are still addressed to the National Business Center for blocking the company's quotas.

These days, the Fier Customs has submitted, through the bailiff, a request for seizure to the CKB against the ARMO entity.

It is about an amount of about 120 million lek (about 1.1 million euros). Records show that ARMO's debt to Fier customs was incurred as far back as 2013 and the enforcement order was issued in 2016. While the debt was incurred while the company was in operation, customs are seeking to collect it, although already the main line of ARMO, the refinery has been dismantled.

The data from the KKB show that throughout this year a series of requests from the enforcement are for the account of ARMO. Despite the situation on the ground, ARMO has an active status in the National Business Center.

In addition to customs, ARMO was on the list of large debtors in taxes with an accumulated liability of 8.4 billion lek by the end of 2020.

In 2021, over 800 company employees went on strike for almost 13 back wages. Two years ago, the bank it managed sold ARMO's assets for about 9 million euros to the company "Shijaku", which dismantled and sold it for scrap, one of the largest works of the Albanian industrial sector.

ARMO has a complicated history after the fall of communism. After being privatized in 2008, the company changed ownership many times, leaving millions of euros in debt, from salaries and employee insurance, obligations beyond taxes, customs, banks and many entities that were in business relationships.

Deep Oil Processing Plant in Ballsh started working in 1978 with two main lines: raw material processing and provision of oil by-products from a quantitative point of view and quality improvement. The plant was originally designed to have a production capacity of 1 million tons of crude oil and 250,000 tons of fuel that would come from refineries that had already been commissioned.

The Ballshi refinery at the time it was built had all the necessary modern technological plants for oil processing as well as auxiliary systems. 2,200 workers were employed in the plant before privatization and the profit amounted to about 10-15 million dollars before privatization./ Monitor magazine