A company whose owner has been convicted of corruption has just won a tender in the reconstruction project valued at \u20ac15.5 million euros.<\/p>\n
Euronews Albania has secured the official ruling released by the Court of Appeals for Serious Crimes, which was issued on November 23, 2018, sentencing businessman Ylber Kalaja to 2.5 years in prison.<\/p>\n
Kalaja was accused of corrupting a high government official working in the Prisons Directorate in exchange for winning several different tenders in the food industry.<\/p>\n
Along with Kalaja, the Appeals Court also sentenced the former Director-General of Albanian Prisons, Iljaz Lazi and 3 other company administrators.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of the investigations, Kalaja changed his company\u2019s name from \u2018Vllaznia\u2019 to \u2018Dajti Park 2007\u2019 and after being convicted by the court at the end of 2018, he gifted 50% of his company\u2019s shares to his brother Desard Kalaja and the remainder to Lulzim Qefalia, who is the brother of former Socialist MP Xhemal Qefalia.<\/p>\n
Even though its former owner and administrator were convicted of corruption, this company continues to win food-related tenders and after the 2019 earthquake, it embarked on yet another \u2018specialty\u2019 \u2013 reconstruction.<\/p>\n
Through the Albanian Development Fund and a merger of operators, \u2018Dajti Park 2007\u2019 has been able to win 3 contracts amounting to 11 million euros whereas, through Tirana\u2019s Municipality, it drafted and won a reconstruction project for the area of Kombinat valued at \u20ac4.5 million euros.<\/p>\n
The law on public procurements strictly prohibits the participation in tenders of all companies whose business partners may have been convicted of corruption or other serious crimes.<\/p>\n
This hasn\u2019t stopped Dajti Park 2007 from being one of the 6 companies which profit large sums of money from reconstruction tenders.<\/p>\n
The lack of transparency in procedures followed by the Ministry of Reconstruction on procurements in this area has been harshly criticized by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) but despite criticism from an international entity, none of these decisions have been corrected.<\/p>\n
The government hasn\u2019t accepted any of the loans offered by donors back in February 2020, during the Brussels Conference, thus consciously choosing to not have a regulatory body to inspect and oversee tender procedures.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A company whose owner has been convicted of corruption has just won a tender in the reconstruction project valued at \u20ac15.5 million euros. Euronews Albania has secured the official ruling released by the Court of Appeals for Serious Crimes, which was issued on November 23, 2018, sentencing businessman Ylber Kalaja to 2.5 years in prison. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":37939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[153],"tags":[151],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n