The documents that Dritan Prençi doesn't see

The Tirana incinerator is known as one of the biggest scandals ever committed in our country, which has devoured hundreds of millions of lek from the state budget and the pockets of Albanians.

On Monday, CNA published a document related to the 60 million euro land affair, one of the largest corruption schemes , which arose after the signing of the monopoly concession contract for the Tirana landfill, which also included the construction of an incinerator, which to this day remains non-existent.

This Wednesday we are bringing another document that is also in the file of prosecutor Dritan Prençi and that directly implicates Mayor Erion Veliaj in abuse of office.

Erion Veliaj, the mayor of Tirana, now behind bars, has signed important documents related to the Tirana incinerator project . In March 2017, Veliaj signed a document accepting the feasibility study for the construction of the Tirana incinerator. This study later turned out to have falsified costs. He also signed an annex-contract that transferred significant financial responsibility for the project to the Tirana Municipality.

Veliaj took on the role of representing not only the Municipality of Tirana, but also four other municipalities in the region, without consulting them, paving the way for a 30-year concession contract with an initial value of 128 million euros . This contract was signed without the prior approval of the Municipal Council, in violation of the law on local self-government. This document is evidence to accuse Veliaj of abuse of office and unauthorized financial commitments .

But the mayor has more than one signature thrown into the affair . Veliaj, with his signature, has committed to making all payments for the storage and processing of the minimum amount of waste at a price of 29 euros per ton excluding VAT , throughout the entire duration of the agreement (for the next 30 years), but he also committed to providing assistance for all procedures related to the construction and operation of the non-existent Tirana incinerator .

But waste processing exceeds 29 euros per ton, as the document that CNA published on Monday confirmed that Veliaj's directors added the issue of soils and their sending to the landfill, and also signed illegally, thus increasing revenues by tens of millions of euros every year .

We are faced with the fact that the non-existent Tirana incinerator has devoured hundreds of millions of euros, with a clear scheme set up by a structured criminal group . While prosecutor Dritan Prençi has indicted second- and third-rate officials or directors.

The incinerator affair does not end with what happened on April 16. Lefter Koka has gone to trial again, Taulant Tushe has received his sentence, as well as several other lower-ranking officials.

One of the biggest crimes in the incinerators affair is the media, one of which is "Top Channel", which once emphasized that it "fired the fine-bearers" and then made these fine-bearers directors, who turned out to be part of the structured criminal group of incinerators.

Mirel Mërtiri, Klodian Zoto, Endrit Habilaj, through the incinerator company paid the media. Through "Top Channel" they attacked the SPAK prosecutors. And, today the crime has still not been solved.

The documents published today by CNA prove that the accusations about the non-existent incinerator in Tirana are not just words. The first one was signed by the directors of "5D", the second one was signed by Veliaj and all of them, together with Mërtir, Zoto and others, collaborated to devour the money of Albanian citizens, while the incinerator still suffers to this day./ CNA

Dritan Prençi, prosecutor, illustrative photo

The incinerator file is one of the biggest affairs in Albania. One of the affairs that we had not seen or heard of in these 34 years of democratic transition.

CNA is bringing a document today, which has an invoice value of around 60 million euros.

This document was signed on 15.10.2018 and the company "Integrated Energy BV SPV sh.pk" Later, in the Netherlands, it changed its name and became "Geogenix". This company, which went through many procedural and technical actions to hide the name of Klodian Zoto, as a shareholder, or of Giuseppe Ciaffaglione, after deceiving the Albanian state with a major international brand like 'Paul Wurth'.

This company won a contract "For the construction of a landfill, incinerator and rehabilitation of existing landfills" in Tirana. An incinerator, which in fact does not exist, and a landfill that is ready in an emergency for the capital.

There is no more capacity for holding the garbage, there is no more capacity for the soil. Everything is mismanaged, misdirected, turned into something beyond a scandal.

The big crime is the fact that in the concession contract document, the company had defined the issue of soils. However, a misunderstanding was found regarding solid waste, which would cost the pockets of businesses and citizens of Tirana about 60 million euros.

After the company made an agreement with the directors of the Municipality of Tirana, Evisjon Salku and Taulant Tusha, who seem to have no right to sign that kind of document, since the contract is made by the contracting authority, which should have been the Municipality of Tirana and would have been signed by the mayor, not a bunch of directors signing some papers.

Perhaps those directors are some inside and some outside the "5D" scheme, but they had no right to use the official seal of the Municipality of Tirana. That is used by the mayor and the institutions well-defined in the law.

They invented the soils, their transportation to the landfill. They made a contract, put some seals on it and let themselves be like hyenas on the business, setting fees so that the soils would be taken to the Sharra landfill by force and then, by force, you would buy them again. When you took them, you paid 400 lek/m³, so about 4 euros, when you picked them up, you got them for 8, or they went up to 10-12 euros depending on the type of differentiation, soils, inerts, etc.

Let's go further.

They avoided in this contract the possible recycling of the soils, so that the construction company itself does not have one pit, but two pits and one is being eroded, digging, the other is finished, soil is needed for settlements. They were not allowed to take it, but they had to go once to get the money from Klodian Zoto and Mirel Mërtiri, then get the money again to get the soil from Klodian Zoto with Mirel Mërtiri. They could not transport the soils from facility 1 to facility 2, so that what could be called the process of recycling the soils could be done. And this is because of this famous contract that is in the incinerators' file.

This contract is in the hands of prosecutor Dritan Prençi.

The land issue is one of the biggest issues that has a major impact on the payments made for the incinerators. The payment, which, we should emphasize, is around 10 million euros per year, is still being paid by the Albanian government, through an unconditional transfer from the Municipality of Tirana, and the rest is paid by the citizens of Tirana, after the builders left the bill of 15 euros/m² that they incurred during construction to the citizens.

This document is a serious accusation in the incinerator issue and cannot be closed with 3-4 technicalities with Lefter Koka or Taulant Tushe, with some official who probably didn't feel any pain from the meat that Mirel Mërtiri and Klodian Zoto have distributed on the spit.

The land affair leads the case to a structured criminal group and this is not the only document that Dritan Prençi has in his file regarding the Tirana incinerator case. ( READ HERE )

This is one of the main documents.

CNA, from today onwards, will continue day after day to recover the documents about the Tirana incinerator, to return the memory to the public, to show everyone that the incinerator issue is not easily forgotten, even if the prosecutor wants to close it.

There are documents that will be opened with another prosecutor, with another case, with other details, no matter how much businessmen, billionaires, media, partnerships, and politics try to throw such a criminal affair in the trash or think that the biggest miracle is that it lasts 3 days. ( READ HERE )

The wonder of the incinerators will never end, until the day when even the last responsible person and the one who took the last penny and stole the pockets of poor Albanians will be held accountable./CNA