The Special Prosecution Against Corruption and Organised Crime, SPAK, announced the arrest of 11 people involved in the Fier incinerator scandal, but the names remain under wraps for now.
The incinerators affair saw the government issue three concessions for the construction and operation of waste incinerators in Fier, Tirana, and Elbasan to a company with no experience in such matters and with no demand.
First published in Exit, investigations revealed that the contracts would see the company being paid for every day the incinerators were not burning waste, even during the construction phase. This has seen millions in taxpayers’ money be ploughed into them, to the benefit of those behind them, with nothing in the way of results.
Furthermore, in the case of the Fier incinerator, it has now been discovered that the Energy Ministry accepted fake invoices and made payments to the tune of millions of euros for work that remains unfinished, even after the authorities seized it and its staff were charged with corruption and money laundering.
SPAK did not reveal details as to whether any of the 11 were public officials.
“We have no other announcements to make, investigations continue. When the investigations are finished, we will give an announcement,” SPAK spokeswoman Xuljeta Krasta told BIRN.
According to SPAK’s announcement, the concession company Integrated Technology Waste Treatment Fier was paid until June 30 2022, in the amount of €35 million, with a good portion of the funds earmarked for invoices that were subsequently deemed fraudulent.
“It turns out that on the part of the citizen Klodian Zoto, the main shareholder of the concession company ‘Integrated Technology Waste Treatment Fier’ sh.pk, in cooperation with the citizen Arenc Myrtezani, administrator of this company, falsified situations in the amount of €4 million have been reflected and used, for services that were not performed, value paid by the Contracting Authority and profited by fraud from the concessionaire company…,” SPAK said in their press release.
Ex- Socialist Party minister Lefter Koka and his former general secretary Alqi Blako have also been probed further amid the recent developments. According to SPAK, Koka received some €1.2 million in bribes from the concession company while Blako fictitiously employed his father in the Tirana incinerator, to the tune of €6,000 a month between October 2018 and January 2020.
Meanwhile, the government continues to pay the concessions under the terms of the contracts, arguing it cannot breach them, a point that has been disputed by local legal experts.
The EU has repeatedly called on the government to fully investigate the incinerator scandal and bring all those involved to justice.
(Alice Taylor | Exit.al)
Source: euractiv.com
