How are oligarchs being paid billions in advance for tenders, without any work being done yet?

A month ago, on December 13th, the Albanian Road Authority signed a contract with the Salillari company for the construction of the Elbasan-Papërr axis, with a total value of 20 million euros, excluding value-added tax. And the money was not delayed.

Four days ago, the state treasury authorized a transfer worth 1 million euros to the account of the Salillari company as payment for the construction of the Elbasan Paper road. However, the ARRSH payment was not the only payment the company received for work still unfinished. Another payment from the Albanian Development Fund was even more flagrant.

On November 27, the Albanian Development Fund announced the winner of the Salillari company for the construction of a hotel and parking lot at the Mother Teresa University Hospital Center. The contract worth 12 million euros was signed in December. Meanwhile, on January 14, the Albanian Fund transferred 2.5 million euros to the company's account for this contract.

Ironically, on the day that Dritan Agolli was pouring billions into Salillari's accounts, the QSUT parking lot was visited by Prime Minister Edi Rama and his Minister of Health, Albana Koçiu. Apart from the fencing, no work had been done at the site, not even the 2.5 million euros that the treasury paid.

But the Salillari company is just one of the large budget recipients that have received money for unfinished work in recent days. The Gjikuria company, another major beneficiary of budget funds, was paid 2.4 million euros for the reconstruction of the Maliq-Lozhan road axis.

Construction of this road began in late 2022. But the 2.4 million euro payment to the company was additional to the initial tender value as a result of a contract modification. The modified contract worth 2.4 million euro was only signed on December 10.

Fusha, 4 AM, Zdrava were some of the other companies that received billions of lek in advance payments for unfinished work in the first days of this year.

The budget law authorizes that in specific cases the government can pay advances to its private contractors up to 10 percent of the contract. But this can only be done with the authorization of the state treasury. This time the specific cases were many. And this makes advance payments a big business.

In the Albanian reality, getting money from the budget is not easy, even when the contract has been executed. This situation led in some cases to the leaders of public institutions creating informal factoring businesses by paying money to private companies, in return for a certain percentage of commission.

In other cases, businesses have been forced to bribe institutional leaders to receive payments they were owed for work performed. When money is given in advance, suspicions of bribery are even greater.

But while the ARRSH's Gjyla, the Albanian Fund's Agolli and the State Treasury distributed billions of lek in advance payments to budget sharks, thousands of Albanian citizens wait for years to receive expropriation money even when the government has thrown them out onto the streets, demolishing their homes./ kapitali.al