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The government sells the confiscated buildings 10 times cheaper than the market, in Liqeni it is bought for 223 euros/ square meter

2024-01-11 13:13:17Investigim SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Illustrative photo

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, Fluturimi insulated the sole and fixed the balconies of the house in Kamëz, a 4-story building where he lives with his family and that of his brother. Part of the works was a cover for the water tank on the terrace.

The next day, while the concrete was still wet and the scaffolding was still up, the State Police and inspectors from the Territory Protection Inspectorate came to his alley.

"They took me on the phone [and] told me to report to the police in Kamëz", recalled Fluturimi. "I went that same day, they interrogated me for 3 and a half hours", he added.

The flight had received a permit for the installation of a solet in the Municipality and had paid a fee of 10,000 lek for the works, but the Police and the Territory Protection Inspectorate found it in excess of the permit for the addition of the water tank cover. Twenty-one months later, the 50-year-old from Kamza was sentenced by the Court of Tirana to 4 months in prison for building without a permit. A fine of 500,000 lek was imposed on him by the Kamez Municipality.

The speed with which the authorities tracked down and sanctioned Flight's legal violation is unusual. Just a few kilometers away from Kamza, close to the Artificial Lake and the center of Tirana, during 2022 a dozen construction companies violated building permits by adding floors without permission on high-rise buildings.

Despite the fact that the works lasted for months, the builders continued to work undisturbed until the fall of 2022, when the government adopted a controversial decision to confiscate the additions that until then had escaped the vigilance of inspectors facing citizens simple.

Unlike the citizens, the government opened a path for the big builders, which according to experts and the opposition, allows them to legalize the additional illegal floors, first by confiscating them and later by selling them to the law breakers themselves.

But, while the Council of Ministers in the letter provided for a payment at the market price for these additions, which in Tirana costs several thousand euros per square meter, BIRN discovered that they were estimated at an average price of 223 euros per square meter.

Construction experts and representatives of the opposition see the procedure as an open violation of equality before the law. Jorida Tabaku, deputy of the Democratic Party, said that the procedure clearly shows the favoring of large builders.

"They are strong with the weak, with illegal constructions, with the measure that was taken a few years ago that people went to jail for a window, for a yard, for a house threshold, I have endless in my constituency", Tabaku said.

Arlind Qori, former candidate for mayor of Tirana and chairman of the Joint Movement, said that there is a "scandalous gap" between the real price - up to 5 thousand euros per square meter in these areas - and the price that the appraisers employed by the Ministry of Finances have been given to buildings.

"This difference shows how the central government is clearly favoring the tower builders at the expense of the public interest," he said.

In response to BIRN's questions, the Ministry of Finance left responsibility for the low prices to valuation experts, washing their hands of responsibility.

"The evaluation reports were drawn up by licensed experts and the evaluation of the confiscated objects was done using object evaluation methods, referring to its actual structure and condition in accordance with the legislation in force," the Ministry said in a written response.

How much did the chicken cost?

At the year-end press conference, held on December 30, 2023, Prime Minister Edi Rama returned to the confiscated buildings due to unauthorized additions, which are undergoing this procedure. Referring to the pre-purchase documents signed between the Ministry of Finance and 9 builders, Rama boasted that the state had collected 3.5 million euros from 5 buildings and that it expected to receive 10.5 million euros in total.

"So, for every square meter done without a permit, where the pre-purchase by the subjects has been considered, the subjects are paying and will pay until the end as much as a chicken for every square meter they have done without a permit", said the Prime Minister.

According to Rama, the receipts in the budget refuted the accusations against this process which, according to him, were "a noise accompanied by many conjectures and many slanders".

Through the right to information request, BIRN received from the Ministry of Finance the evaluation reports for the 9 buildings found in violation of the construction permit.

Of these constructions, 6 have violated the construction permit with over 10% of the surface and have been completely confiscated, while one company has violated the construction permit with 6% - according to the decision of the KKT - and only the addition has been confiscated. The other two properties confiscated and in the process of pre-purchase are located in Kavaja.

Based on these evaluation reports, eight of which are based on the cost method, the average price that companies caught in violation of building permits in Tirana are forced to pay is 223 euros per square meter.

The highest price of 305.3 euros per square meter belongs to the building built by the company "Fabri D" on Kont Urani street, about 500 meters from Skënderbej square. The lowest price – 170 euros per square meter – is for the building built by the Salillari company near the Zoo. In total, the companies are estimated to have to pay around 14.9 million euros for 71,000 square meters without permission in the capital.

In the evaluation reports, the experts mainly claim that they could not use another method because the objects were unfinished and that "we cannot easily find similar properties on the market".

The appraisers, who refer to the Decision of the Council of Ministers 970/2020 "on the methodology of determining the value of the item in the process of compulsory execution" and the European Appraisal Standard, argue the choice of methodology with the fact that the State Cadastre Agency (ASHK ) was not given or there were no sales contracts for these assets or similar ones.

The only evaluation report that refers to a method other than cost, for an object in Qerret of Kavaja with developer company Veizi sh.pk, put the value of the object at 464 euros per square meter, several times higher than the objects of evaluated in the capital.

Architect Dorina Musai told BIRN that the cost method used for the evaluations of the eight buildings in violation of the building permit in the capital was not appropriate and did not match the purpose of determining the market value for them.

Referring to the fact that the real estate market is open and the prices easily verifiable, Musai says that this valuation contradicts the European Valuation Standard which limits the use of this method only when "there is a total lack of market data ".

"In different countries, the cost method as a market method is rarely used and always accompanied by another method", said Musai.

"It is permissible to use the market method, if there are no market transactions and the appraiser is obliged to determine the market value," she added.

Referring to the case in question, Musai emphasized that the correct method would be that of "direct comparison", according to which the appraiser derives the price based on sales and purchases of similar properties in the area.

Contrary to what is claimed in the appraisal acts, VKM 970/2020, which is taken as the legal basis, requires appraisers to derive the price of a property based on a series of data, including notarial contracts, data from real estate agencies or even prices published online.

According to Musa, in the center of the capital the prices range from 3,000 to 4,500 euros per square meter, in some cases they have even reached 7,000 euros per square meter of the apartment. As for service premises, they range from 6,000 to 15,000 euros per square meter.

"So the market is one thing and the value set by the government is another," she said.

Even the prices posted by the companies that have violated the permit, in some cases, are many times higher than the estimate made by the Ministry of Finance.

The chairman of Lévizje Bashke, Arlind Qori, told BIRN that the entire process of repurchasing the seized square meters is unfair, if the public interest is taken into consideration.

"As long as the seized floors have become the property of the state, then the latter should put these floors up for public auction and sell them to the highest bidders, despite the fact that the latter may not have been the original owners of the the building", he said.

For architect Dorina Musai, the entire procedure used is illegal.

"The scheme used to confiscate and then sell the surfaces built without permission to the same subjects is legalization outside the conditions of the law, thus developing a differentiated and exclusive scenario only for some citizens", she explained.

However, the Ministry of Finance insists that it is simply enforcing the law and the relevant VKM.

"The procedures followed by the MFE related to the confiscation for public interest of buildings built without permission were followed in accordance with the provisions of VKM no. 589, dated 07.09.2022 and Instruction no. 27, dated 23.09.2023", she emphasized, referring to the decisions of the Council of Ministers.

Complex investigations

The flight, which covered the house to escape moisture and created a shelter for the water deposit, was represented by a lawyer mainly in court. The issue was "closed". Evidence was presented to the court, including photos and full details of the works.

"In the court they had everything, even the clean photos, the gray color of the terrace insulation was also visible. Nothing had escaped them. On Sunday, I laid the soleta, on Monday they came", he says.

In a short trial, the 50-year-old, who is still waiting for the legalization of his house built in the 2000s, was sentenced to 6 months in prison and got 2 months reduced due to the summary trial.

Before the court he says that he accepted everything and that he did not feel guilty.

"I have no shame, I fixed my house", he stressed, while adding that there is a difference between him and the big builders in the capital.

"They are oligarchs, they pay for coffee, they have interests with each other. I didn't give them anything. I was a fukara, I am a fukara, a fool," he says with some self-irony.

Unlike Fluturimi and hundreds of other eyes, whose criminal proceedings last only a few months, the big builders have not yet been seen in court.

In fact, they continued to work in the buildings without permission even after they were confiscated as public property and apparently did not fear any punishment from the justice system.

According to the Prosecutor's Office of Tirana, the investigations started for the buildings built in violation of the permit are still ongoing. Prosecutors Arens Çela, Erjon Imeraj and Arjan Përmeti, who have 5 investigative files under investigation, told BIRN that these cases were complex. According to the Prosecutor's Office of Tirana, 3 of the investigations are at the stage of notifying the parties of the charge. Meanwhile, other investigations, as BIRN learned, were still awaiting expert reports.

Prosecutor Erjon Imeraj told BIRN that the investigations in these cases required more evidence than the agreement between the Ministry of Finance and the companies, in which the latter admit guilt.

"The agreement they make with the government is not enough for me, I definitely need the act of expertise", he said.

For the MP of the opposition, Jorida Tabaku, the whole situation with constructions without permission in Tirana is proof of the government's failure.

"How could they have saved the mayor 7 floors without permission in front of his office, if he himself did not have the political will to let it be built?" Tabaku asks.

"This is a failure of control of the territory by the Municipality, of course in cooperation with the central government", she concluded./  BIRN


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