Investigation/ Balances and strikes against "Air Albania", is "Turkish Airlines" behind it?!

2025-08-29 10:15:00, Denoncim CNA

Investigation/ Balances and strikes against "Air Albania", is

“Air Albania” came like a diamond for Albania, its name would be our pride. It would fly in the skies of Europe, why not and beyond, it would be “Air Albania” in all airports. But along the way everything became complex, politicized, accused, somewhere the criticism was valid, somewhere the accusation was false. This is a brief overview of what has happened this summer with “Air Albania”.

A little introduction

Recently, there have been many reports that essentially had one goal, to damage this company, but also the name it bore in particular.

Half-truths, scenarios, and media intrigues that muddied the waters, which we thought we would shed some light on to understand what the truth was and what was happening.

After summarizing the importance of “Air Albania” to Albanians, which you can read here , we started digging deeper to understand more about the company's past and future.

To deal with everything that was being thrown around in the peripheral media or not, we asked for the balance sheets, that is, the statements with financial data declared in the Central Bank, and surprisingly there was nothing. The company has not declared them since its establishment.

Who are the shareholders of "Air Albania"?

There is no financial data for "Air Albania" in the Central Bank. From the extract you read below, the company "Turkish Airlines" has 49% of the shares, MDN Investment (owned by citizen Sinan Idrizi) has 41% and ALBcontrol has 10% of the shares, although in the extract and the Central Bank system it comes out with 1%.

extract

The shareholders and other actions are published, but there is no balance sheet of the company. To clarify the whole situation, we intentionally addressed “Air Albania” officially, but up to the moment of this writing we did not receive a response from any of the people we contacted. The only one who answered the phone said to send the questions by e-mail and, of course, we never received a response.

From everything we researched and read from the media and publications of our colleagues, the fact is that information about balance sheets and documents was available in the media, but not in the Central Bank, they did not exist.

"Turkish Airlines" and "Air Albania"

What we further discovered is that one of the shareholders, "Turkish Airlines", for years declared financial information regarding the company "Air Albania", in official documents published for their investors.

“Turkish Airlines” is a big name and company, which is listed on the stock exchange and declares in legal institutions in Turkey. So, even though “Air Albania” does not declare since the beginning of its activity in Albania, in Turkey “Turkish Airlines” reports its financial activity, which also includes the activity of “Air Albania”. So, in short, the materials published in the media about “Air Albania” are based on the declarations of “Turkish Airlines”.

The investigation goes to Turkey

Seeing this fact and providing us with this data, i.e. the statements of "Turkish Airlines", the CNA editorial team went further, sending some questions by e-mail to the leaders of "Turkish Airlines". The e-mail was sent on Tuesday and you can read it here, the questions are as follows:

"Since we are preparing an investigative article regarding 'Air Albania', the national airline of Albania, which has been at the center of much speculation since its founding, we would need your support as a shareholder of this company to answer some questions that will shed light on this investigation. According to Investor Relations and KAP reports:

1. In your financial reports for the period since the company's establishment, we noticed the sentence 'Since 31 December 2019, the loss of Air Albania, which exceeds the Group's total share in the share capital of the joint venture, has not been accounted for in the consolidated financial statements.'

As of June 30, 2025, the loss is US$3. (Loss as of December 31, 2024: US$3), referring to US$3 million and in the Turkish version 98 million TL. Since 'Air Albania' has not submitted any financial statements to the National Business Center in Albania (NBC), in case you have any copy of this Financial Statement of 'Air Albania', we would like to have a copy of it.

2. Referring to the above topic, we would also like to request information for the entire period for any Audit Reports, sales, revenue, passenger numbers, expense reports, etc., on which your statement is based?”

email sent by CNA

As of the time of publication of this article, Friday, August 29, at 10:15 AM, the CNA editorial office has not received any response from "Turkish Airlines".

The silence that increases doubts and questions

As is clear from the situation, there are some concerns related to the company and the statements of "Turkish Airlines". But the silence only adds to the suspicions.

Since we did not receive a response from the company, nor from the official auditor, to whom we sent the same questions, the fog that covers everything from silence leads to many uncertainties, which require an answer.

First, could the published audited documents be falsified and is Turkish Airlines manipulating investors? This is a fundamental question to understand the truth of the balance sheets regarding Air Albania.

Since 2018, as we also found out, the company “Air Albania” has been managed by its own personnel. The question arises, since the establishment of “Air Albania”, has the CEO, Sinan Dilek, (who is still a director of “Turkish Airlines”, SVP Catering & In-Flights Products), manipulated the data, or has he shared it only with his company, or has he not fulfilled his obligations? Because the non-declarations in Albania start in 2018, from the day it was launched.

Another fairly simple question is: Why is the company still not declaring its Financial Statements, not even the change in management, as understood from the extract? Why is the new CEO of "Air Albania", Sinan Isik, not publishing the Financial Statements of "Air Albania"?

Another question that still remains unanswered is how the other two shareholders of the company, who together own 51%, allow such biased publications?

And the last, but also very important question is: Why do the published documents have different values ??between the English and Turkish versions? When we received the documents, we also noticed this, the difference in the balance (Turkish, English) is almost 25% of its total.

(Difference in balance, Turkish and English)

The mission continues.

This investigation of ours regarding “Air Albania” is done to clarify and understand the truth of the name that represents our Albania in the skies of Europe and beyond. We did not find complete answers, but our mission continues.

We, more than an official response, found silence, and by verifying the data we found materials or information that further increased our suspicions that everything that was happening was beyond "Air Albania".

It goes to the 49% shareholder, Turkish Airlines, the largest shareholder that never answered our questions, but simply added to the doubts we raised above./ CNA