Massacre of corruption/ Albpetrol deducts the export costs for the oil it sells in the country

2023-09-11 11:35:00, Aktualitet CNA

Massacre of corruption/ Albpetrol deducts the export costs for the oil it sells

Illustrative photo

The sale of oil that the public company Albpetrol produces from its own wells or receives from concession companies is a big corrupt affair, through which millions of dollars of public assets are stolen. The High State Control has discovered a scheme in which Albpetrol fictitiously lowers the price at which it sells oil to the local refineries that process it.

The abuse is so evident that in the auctions for the sale of oil, Albpetrol was recognized and deducted from the price to the buying companies even the costs of transporting the oil for export, when in fact the oil never goes outside, but is bought by two private domestic refineries. that of Fier and Cërrik.

Only as a result of this scheme, according to the Criminal Code, 5.8 million dollars were stolen from Albanian citizens in the last two years.

Game with the prize

Every year, Albpetrol provides about 100-120 thousand tons of oil from the production of its wells, or from the oil received from the concession companies, which use the country's oil resources.

Albpetrol sells this amount every year by auction according to a floor price predetermined by its experts. "In the procedures of the oil sale auctions, it was found that the group of experts, for determining the initial price/minimum unit of sale of crude oil, reduced costs from the determined sale price of the auction, presupposing costs for putting the product in FOB conditions according to the conditions of the International Stock Exchange for hydrocarbons" says KLSH.

But in reality, these expenses are never incurred, since the oil is not exported, but is processed in the private refineries of Fier or Elbasan. "Most of the expenses that are reduced from the sale price are fictitious as it does not happen that the oil sales were carried out in local economic operators and there were no foreign companies that were announced as winners of the auctions," says the KLSH report.

beneficiaries

KLSh has controlled three auctions conducted by Albpetrol. The first sale is that of the amount of 40 thousand tons, which was obtained from the merger of Economic Operators RBH Beline" sh.a., Elbasan, and Al Global Oil. The first company owns a refinery in Cerrik, while Al Global Oil is the owner of the Bitumen Plant in Fier.

According to KLSH in this auction, the value of expenses not incurred, but deducted by Albpetrol in the price was 3.55 USD per barrel, reaching a total of 859 thousand dollars.

The second auction was held in April 2021, but this time with the amount of 100 thousand tons of oil. In this auction, the Europetrol Durrës Albania company was declared the winner, which offered the price of 73.3 percent of Brent minus 3.6 USD per barrel. The price reduction of 3.6 dollars per barrel is an abuse as these expenses are fictitious causing a total damage to the public budget of 2.3 million dollars.

The third procedure is that of the sale of 120 thousand tons of oil in April 2022. Also in this procedure, the merger of operators between Europetrol Durrës and RBH Beline" sh.a., Elbasan, which offered the price of 75.33 percent of Brent minus 3.36 USD per barrel.

According to KLSH, the value of the unfinished expenses in this auction amounts to 2 million and 630 thousand dollars, which money has been unfairly deducted from the price of the purchase of oil.

In total, for only three controlled auctions, 5.8 million dollars were unjustly abused, money which should have been collected in the budget of the Albpetrol company, but which were deducted as fictitious expenses to private companies.

That free sale of oil is just one of the schemes of how Albetrol extorts the public wealth of citizens by sharing it with private individuals. But the massacre of mismanagement in the public oil company costs Albanian citizens tens of millions of dollars every year. Money that is stolen and goes to private accounts. / Oligarchia.al