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The CEZ-DIA scandal that has crushed Ilir Meta for a decade

2023-02-22 21:31:38Fokus SHKRUAR NGA MERO BAZE

 

The CEZ-DIA scandal that has crushed Ilir Meta for a decade
Ilir Meta in SPAK

 

 

Ilir Meta appeared today at the doors of SPAK to be questioned about a serious history of corruption, related to one of his closest associates, involved in a fraud scheme for the collection of debts of the former company CEZ in Albania, realized thanks to the political support of Ilir Meta at the time he governed in coalition with Sali Berisha.

This is the second time this story has gone public. It was first opened in 2015, when Meta was allied with Rama. The debate was opened after several journalistic reports of the BIRN agency, about the involvement of Ilir Meta in lobbying for a fraudulent contract against a reward from the company. At that time, the Democratic Party tried to attack Meta, while today it is on his side. This story in itself is one of the events that most dictated Ilir Meta's political course and why not, and his mental health for eight years.

What is the CEZ-DIA scandal

After CEZ bought OSHE in 2009, and found there an uncollected debt from customers, he signed an agreement with Kastriot Ismailaj, a close person of Ilir Meta, for the collection of this debt, which ended with receiving millions of euros from DIA, without performing no real work, under the political lobbying of Ilir Meta and Kastriot Ismailaj's supporters in the government.

The favor Kastriot Ismailaj did you was that he used fake documents to sign a credible contract, while his company was just a few pieces of paper registered under the name "Debt International Advisory", DIA, in the British Virgin Islands on July 7, 2010 , some time after he had begun contract negotiations.

The former Minister of Economy, the late Dritan Prifti, denouncing this scandal, stated at that time during an interview on Top Channel that Ilir Meta traveled to the Czech Republic to negotiate the contract.

The contract was signed in September 2010 and DIA was supposed to collect debts over 90 days from any institution or natural person who had not paid the invoices.

Later, investigations revealed that the DIA company was fictitious, even though it presented that it had employees in Tirana and had departments in several districts.

According to an annex to the contract made public by the BIRN journalists' network in Tirana, CEZ should pay DIA 512 thousand euros per month as a fixed fee and another fee based on the success of debt collection.

Under the agreement, CEZ gave DIA 210 of its workers to use in the field, and those who refused were fired.

While on November 25, 2010, the company's supervisory board refused to vote on the contract, on the same day DIA billed CEZ 1 million euros in one invoice and 500 thousand euros in another, which were paid that day.

The justification was that these payments were made to you as invoices to identify the debt, although it was not true.

But in fact, as it was revealed later, these payments were made after Kastriot Ismailaj had promised to lobby the Albanian government through Ilir Meta, for a dubious decision of the Energy Regulatory Entity, which would reduce the sale price of energy from KESH to CEZ, from ALL 2.03 to ALL 1.48.

The son of former Prime Minister Sali Berisha, Shkëlzen Berisha, is also involved in this scandal. The former director of CEZ in Albania, Hejsek, informs his superiors in Prague through an email where he says that they will meet in Tirana with Prime Minister Berisha and then with his son, which made it clear that he was one of the influencers. of that scandal.

 

The CEZ-DIA scandal that has crushed Ilir Meta for a decade
Email that proves the involvement of Shkelzen Berisha in the lobbying for the reduction of the price of energy from KESH to CEZ

 

The evidence is clear, after the delegation came to Tirana, the meeting took place and the price was lowered.

Three days later CEZ notified DIA that it terminated the contract and Kastriot Ismailaj took the case to arbitration in Vienna.

Kastriot Ismailaj was arrested on May 12, 2015 for several financial crimes, including this case.

Where is Ilir Meta involved?

Ilir Meta is accused of taking bribes from Debt International Advisory, DIA, of Kastriot Ismailaj. The former head of the board of directors of CEZ, Jozef Hejsek, said this in his testimony in the arbitration court, emphasizing that Ilir Meta negotiated from his position as foreign minister for CEZ to work with Kastriot Ismailaj in the meeting of debt.

The lawyers in the arbitration claim that the damage caused by this contract and the political lobbying for it, amount to 30 million dollars for OSHE.

OSHE's lawyer in this arbitration trial, Clifford Chance, says in his report that a payment of less than 500,000 euros was chosen for the bribe, in order to avoid board approval. The report also states that the justification that the payment was for debt identification was false.

Jozef Hejsek, said in testimony that Kastriot Ismailaj was treated as the "candidate" of the Albanian government for the collection of old debts, after he was presented as a close ally of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Meta and of the former Prime Minister Berisha, by the ambassador the Albanian of that time in Prague, Qazim Tepshi.

The CEZ-DIA scandal that has crushed Ilir Meta for a decade

The reaction of Ilir Meta and Berisha at two times to the CEZ-DIA scandal

The scandal became public in 2015, thanks to the work of BIRN journalists. First in the month of June and then in the fall of 2015, the network of investigative journalists published some research that shed light on the implication of Ilir Meta in this story, as a favor of his associate in business, Kastriot Ismailaj.

When the scandal broke, the Democratic Party in the opposition demanded the establishment of an investigative commission and the opening of the case by justice. The reaction of the Democratic Party was very interesting, since the Democratic Party itself was implicated in this story, as the story of its power.

Commenting publicly on this issue at the time, I treated it as an attempt by DP to split the government coalition, which now had Ilir Meta as part of it. I couldn't find a more logical explanation than that.

But meanwhile Ilir Meta was more worried than that. He deeply doubted the government and Edi Rama personally.

On one of the days in mid-September 2015, while Edi Rama was in New York for the work of the UN Assembly, Ilir Meta asked to see me, alarmed about what was happening.

He told me that he had read my writings on this matter, and he agreed that this was a battle to politically divide the opposition, but then he began to "inform" me that he had another version, which was related to the Basha-Rama conspiracy against him.

The explanation was tiresome, paranoid and completely illogical, but based on his fear of the depth Berisha was involved in this story.

Since Sali Berisha's son had also lobbied with him, he was trying to separate Berisha from Basha, accusing the latter of "having a secret meeting with Rama in Vienna about this issue."

As silly as it all seemed, I was trying to figure out why he was actually so terrorized, or at least why he was trying to appear so.

His explanations for the "secret" Basha-Rama meeting were clearly bullshit. On the other hand, his suspicions that Damian Gjiknuri, a minister sponsored by Soros, had paid for BIRN's writings, was illogical, since BIRN is a publicly sponsored journalism network with donations from the EU, the US, and Soros.

I tried to describe his difficult psychological condition to Prime Minister Rama, who was actually staying away from this debate.

The day after that he returned from the UN in New York and from Rinas he went straight to Ilir Meta's office. After that, it seemed that "the patient calmed down". Ilir Meta began to feel more secure in the public debate. He confronted Berisha in the Assembly, reminding him that he resigned once for his son, Shkëlzen, and will not do it again. This was a signal that if it continues, we will both be buried together.

And Berisha seems to have left the fight little by little. He was no longer eager to continue the battle when he saw that Rama and Meta found the wires together.

But as soon as the situation was calming down, an SMS published by Artan Hoxha one evening in December 2015, raised the tension again. The sms sent from Ilir Meta's phone to Kastriot Ismaili talked about an amount of 200,000 euros that he should give to a club where they left the meeting.

The CEZ-DIA scandal that has crushed Ilir Meta for a decade
SMS for Kastriot Ismaili from Ilir Meta

Ilir Meta's alarm was raised again. The suspicions were again about Edi Rama, who, according to him, through a businessman MP, connected to Dritan Prifti, was putting pressure on Kastriot Ismailaj's wife and she was fabricating facts.

Threats began that he would run away from the government if Rama did not succeed. Even that day at lunch, in a meeting of the leadership of LSI, there was talk of withdrawing from the government, but at dinner everything calmed down.

But the doubts never ended. The suspicions led to a fierce conflict between him and Tom Doshi, up to mutual accusations of murder, which led to Doshi's departure from the SP group and then Ilir Meta's departure in 2017.

The re-opening of the case after 8 years finds the political circumstances reversed. Now Ilir Meta is a close ally with Sali Berisha. Sali Berisha can no longer make the speeches he made in 2015 against Ilir Meta, and Ilir Meta cannot make the accusations against Shkëlzen, which he made in the Parliament.

The comic side of the new circumstances is that Lulzim Basha is accused by both Meta and Berisha of collaborating with Edi Rama, as he had paranoia in 2015, but in fact both are outside of this story.

Ilir Meta said that SPAK opens this issue whenever the SP is in crisis, but in fact this issue has never been opened for Ilir Meta, because he was under immunity as president.

And I'm not sure even now if it has been opened, since the fact that Shkëlzen Berisha, who is blatantly involved in this story, was closed, does not make me optimistic that they will delve into this investigation.

But if you want to understand why Ilir Meta often doesn't seem right from a mental state, read this story and understand the reason. For the first time I saw it like this eight years ago when this story started.

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