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DW: Arben Ahmetaj's file, a test for SPAK, is impunity at high levels coming to an end?

2023-03-31 09:05:43Aktualitet SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
DW: Arben Ahmetaj's file, a test for SPAK, is impunity at high levels
Arben Ahmetaj

The former senior official in the three Rama governments is being investigated for four criminal offences: non-declaration or false declaration of wealth; passive corruption; money laundering and abuse of office, the latter related to the concession given by him for the incinerator in Elbasan.

Former Prime Minister Ahmetaj rejected SPAK's accusations and insisted that he is not involved "under any circumstances in the affair of the incinerator in Elbasan".

The criminal file of the former deputy prime minister Ahmetaj is seen as a test for SPAK-unrelated to the punishment or not of the corruption of high politicians.

The affair of the incinerators – mega corruption

The affair of incinerators for the treatment of waste constitutes, according to the investigations, one of the most serious cases of corruption and misuse of public funds in Albania. The construction of the incinerators was opened in December 2014, when the Rama government made a change in the national waste treatment strategy, drawn up according to European Union directives, which prioritized the recycling of waste to protect the environment and not its disposal through combustion. The change was followed by legal steps to build plants in Albania where waste would be treated through incineration and electricity would be obtained from the incineration.

A year later, the Rama government signed concession contracts for the construction of incinerators in three cities: Elbasan, Fier and Tirana, with financing through the Private-Public Partnership (PPP) with an initial investment of 178 million euros.

The private companies that won to be part of the PPP turned out to be small companies, registered off-shore, with unknown owners, that took public funds and did not deliver what they had promised: waste incineration and electricity generation. The promises remained on paper, in the concession contracts. Public funds continued to flow to the leaders of off-shore companies who fled when the scandal broke and have been declared internationally wanted by justice.

Abuse of office and abuse of public funds

The scandal erupted when PD, the largest opposition party in Albania, and the Socialist Integration Movement (today the "Liberty Party" in the opposition) filed a criminal complaint with SPAK accusing senior officials of abuse of office and abuse of public funds in construction and operation. of incinerators.

SPAK started investigations at the beginning of 2021 and in December they resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of Lefter Koka, former Minister of the Environment in the first governing mandate of Prime Minister Rama, 2013-2017. Former minister Koka was accused of abuse of office, corruption and money laundering in the two incinerators, in Elbasan and Fier. Together with the former minister Koka, the former socialist deputy, Alqi Blako, and nine public employees, accused of corruption, were arrested.

A parliamentary investigative commission set up for the incinerator affair and directed by the DP, came to opposite conclusions: for the socialist deputies, the construction of the three waste management plants was in accordance with the law. For the opposition, the Rama government had laundered money through corrupt procedures, bringing a loss of 430 million euros to public finances.

Two years later, in February of this year, SPAK launched investigations against former Deputy Prime Minister Ahmetaj. They focused first on the procedure of him granting the concession for the construction of the incinerator in Elbasan, when he was a minister in the Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Entrepreneurship. The granting of the concession was done without a tender announcement and in violation of the law.

The other charges against the former Deputy Prime Minister Ahmetaj are for corruption and money laundering, non-declaration or concealment of wealth and corrupt benefits from incinerators.

At the beginning of this month, SPAK administered all the documentation of 8 real estates and then imposed preventive seizure on two villas on the coast of persons related to former Deputy Prime Minister Ahmetaj.

The rise and fall of former Deputy Prime Minister Ahmetaj

Arben Ahmetaj is the longest serving socialist politician in the three mandates of Prime Minister Rama's government. He has held various ministerial positions in the first two terms and in the third term he took the post of deputy prime minister, which he held for only 11 months, from September 2021 to July 2022, when he was suddenly dismissed by Prime Minister Rama.

Subsequent developments confirmed suspicions that his dismissal may have occurred because of his involvement in the incinerator affair. When SPAK officially published the accusations against Deputy Prime Minister Ahmetaj, Prime Minister Rama, who had a close collaborator in his governments, declared that "if they are true, he cannot help him".

"If he violated the law, he will answer to the law," Rama declared to the media.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Ahmetaj is being investigated in a free state. He continues to be a deputy of the Socialist Party. Independent analysts of Tirana foresee the possibility of his arrest only if SPAK will ask the parliament for a simple authorization, because with the consensual legal changes between the socialist majority and the opposition, the deputies do not enjoy immunity before justice.

Is high-level impunity coming to an end?

Civil society is skeptical. In a protest in front of the headquarters of SPAK, organized in the middle of this week (29.03) by the Albanian Union of Civil Society, the protesters asked SPAK to do justice against corruption, "to investigate, discover and punish the crimes of the leaders of at the top of politics and justice in 30 years of democracy, the politicians who have stolen public wealth and to confiscate the assets obtained in corrupt ways,"

If the former deputy prime minister, Ahmetaj, is arrested, he will be the third senior politician in the socialist governments of Prime Minister Rama, after the former minister of the interior Saimir Tahiri and the former minister of the environment. Lefter Koka, who is given such a punishment. In 2021, the former Prosecutor General, Adriatik Llalla, was sentenced to two years in prison for corruption and non-declaration of assets.

Concrete culture of impunity

The expectations of the citizens of Albania towards SPAK to scale up the concrete culture of impunity of officials are high. Likewise those of the EU, which has opened accession negotiations with Albania. In an exclusive interview for DW, the head of the EU Delegation in Albania, Ambassador Christianne Hohmann, called on SPAK to "effectively deal with high-level corruption."/  Taken from DW


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