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The incinerator of Tirana/ Doubts raised by the delay of SPAK

2023-08-01 18:52:00, Aktualitet CNA

The incinerator of Tirana/ Doubts raised by the delay of SPAK

SPAK's decision to seize Tirana's incinerator, after almost 6 years of its operation, has evoked different reactions on the fate of the biggest corruption scandal in the history of Albania and the leaders who designed it.

Based on some recent strong movements, there are many who hope that with the investigation into the arsonist of Tirana, SPAK is finally heading towards the dome that devised, together with some businessmen already announced as wanted, the spectacular robbery of dozens million euros. There are others, less enthusiastic, who see this delayed decision of SPAK as a "better late than never" action, which is at least putting a buffer to the financial hemorrhage that is burdening the budget and taxpayers. So far, the total amount of payments for the two wanted bosses, Zoto and Mërtiri, has reached over 100 million euros.

It is precisely the delay of SPAK to stop this terrible bleeding as soon as possible, while the facts and indications of a corrupt affair were evident and the real owners announced to be wanted, has raised doubts among the skeptical part who read the seizure decision as an investigation that can be closed to the sawmill pit without going to the real ones responsible.

In addition to the denunciations from the opposition and the media, SPAK has had in its hands, for at least a year and a half, a report from the KLSH that casts strong doubts and lists facts, that the incinerator of Tirana has been a corrupt work from the beginning. KLSH has concluded that the project has been unaffordable for the state budget from the beginning, while the Tirana municipality's cleaning costs have doubled since 2018, precisely because of the payments it has to make to the incinerators. The Municipality of Tirana has paid only for the period 2018-2020, 26.5 million euros) additional, in addition to the cleaning cost of 3.9 billion lek.

According to this report, from 2018 until now, the municipality of Tirana and the Ministry of Industry and Energy are paying a fee of 29 euros/ton of urban waste for the incineration of waste for a service not yet completed, since the incinerator has not yet been completed as an object industrial for burning urban waste. "Currently, the paid price of 29 euros/ton is not the real price of the service performed, as this fee also includes the incineration of waste, a process which has not been carried out to date. Despite not carrying out the waste treatment process, the Municipality of Tirana has continued to pay the full fee for this service", says KLSH.

This fact would be enough for SPAK to have intervened a long time ago, especially when the bosses of the incinerators of Elbasan and Fier were the same ones behind the incinerator of Tirana. What everyone knew, SPAK declared today as a discovery of the investigation it had conducted.

It has not been so difficult to understand the movements of the incinerator bosses to camouflage the ownership of the Tirana incinerator, which has not yet been built. On July 31, 2017, the contract was signed between the Albanian government and the company Integrated Energy BV SPV shpk, founded only 24 hours before the signing of the contract. This company was owned by a company registered in the Dutch Commercial Register. Klodian Zoto was the Administrator and Representative of the Dutch Company for the period 2016 to 2018. The holding company (registered in the Netherlands) changed its name in 2020 from Integrates Energy BV to Geonix BV.

The beneficial owner, the Business Company implementing the concession contract is the company Integrates Energy BV SPV, established on 30 August 2017. The company is owned by a Company registered in the Commercial Register in the Netherlands. In the extract of the beneficial owner submitted to the National Business Center, the owners of the company are three Italian and French citizens. The final ownership from 2016 to 2022 reflects some changes with a different final configuration from the 2016 configuration.

All these data are documented and it would be enough for SPAK to investigate why the responsible authority had not reacted to the change of ownership of the company that had won a 30-year contract with an Unsolicited Proposal, with a value of 336.6 million euros .

Apart from the obvious fact that the municipality of Tirana continues to pay the concession at 29 euros per ton, while the incineration process does not take place, apart from the fact that the change of ownership to lose track of the real beneficiaries has been neglected by the relevant ministry, SPAK could refer to the report of the HCSH also on a serious violation, that of approving the project despite the unaffordable budget costs.

KLSH, a year and a half ago, came to the conclusion that the lack of decision-making by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, in the capacity of evaluator and premature approver of all concession projects from the point of view of fiscal implications, in the case of "Integrated Energy BV" shpk , for the Tirana incinerator, "explicitly expresses the unaffordability and/or instability as well as the undertaking of public commitments that significantly endanger the affordability and effectiveness of the project". And here we are talking about the rejection of the two Ministers of Finance, Cani and Ahmetaj. The latter refused several more times to grant approval as the minister responsible for budget ceilings and financial implications of public-private partnership projects with the argument that it is not clear who will make the payments,

According to SPAK's own investigations into the "Ahmetaj file", after the rejection of the latter, Minister Koka sends another letter, where he clarifies that the costs for the expropriation of the land and the payments for the processed waste will be borne by the municipality itself with transfer funds. unconditional that the budget does. Ahmetaj requests the letter of approval in writing from all municipal units of the Tirana district, according to the financial model sent by the Ministry of Environment, and on March 27, 2017, Erion Veliaj sends the approval to the Secretary General of the Ministry of Environment, Alqi Blako. Ahmetaj refuses to approve it until the Ministry of Environment sends him by email the letter of approval from Erion Veliaj. He then paves the way for the procedure saying "no comments".

So it is clear from the beginning that the actors involved in this mega affair were fully aware of the legal violations and financial implications. They start with the way the competition for Tirana's chili was held, how the bonus was given to the winning company that was registered the day before the contract was signed, how the monopoly of the "two blocks" that had also acquired Elbasan and Fier with the PPP was accepted. Then they continue with finding abusive ways to guarantee colossal payments from the municipalities of the Tirana district and with the predatory payment of 29 euros per ton, while the incineration process does not happen even today, six years after the contract was signed. And in the end, by turning a blind eye to Holland's shell companies, with the intention that the money would continue to flow to the wanted owners and the real bosses of this epic theft.

Exactly six years later, SPAK revealed today that "from the evidence obtained during the investigation, it has emerged that citizens Klodian Zoto and Mirel Mërtiri have used other persons and companies to hide their traces as the real owners of the concession company "Integrated Energy BV SPV "Ltd". It is precisely this long delay, while all the evidence of the robbery was publicly exposed, that raises suspicions that for the Tirana incinerator, SPAK has been more "cautious" than it should be until the sequestration is imposed, despite the financial hemorrhage. Have the prosecutors made political calculations, anticipating that the Tirana affair could cause a fatal shock for the majority? Have they postponed the "preventive sequestration" after the May 14 elections (while this year alone another 16 million euros have flowed into Sharre)? Will they already take this investigation to the end or will it remain suspended only on the sequestration, to be misused like this in the political struggle within the Rilindash organization?

As it has been shown today that Klodian Zoto and Mirel Mërtiri are the owners behind the Tirana concession, SPAK has the challenge of revealing to the Albanians who are the real owners of Zoto and Mërtiri themselves./ lapsi.al





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