According to documents filed with the Public Procurement Agency, the first competition was opened on December 14, 2020 with a limit fund of 191 million euros excluding VAT.
On this date, the Technical Project of the tunnel had not yet been submitted.
A consortium of companies led by the Austrian IC Consult was contracted for a value of 7 million euros to draft the Technical Project.
But as can be seen from the attached documents, the technical project was submitted in March 2021, while the competition was opened 3 months ago.
How was the limit fund calculated at 191 million euros without a project?
How was this value accepted to be accommodated in the budget by the Ministry of Finance and how did the Treasury and the Public Procurement Agency allow the competition to be opened?
These are also answers that the SPAK investigation should provide!
After the first procedure was canceled on the grounds that none of the companies met the qualification criteria, a second tender was opened with a fund limit of 189 million euros excluding VAT.
The Technical Project of the tunnel was also submitted in this procedure.
In the first competition, the lowest bid was from the Gjoka Construction company with 140 million euros to build the work, but the procedure was canceled.
In the second tender, the winning bid was for the merger of the INTEKAR-ASL companies worth 170 million euros.
In reality, the works were carried out by the Gjoka Construction company as a subcontractor, while for the period 2021-2024, the Turks of INTEKAR-ASL resulted in a profit of 28 million euros after taxes.
All profits have been distributed as dividends to the owners and this money seems difficult to recover from the investigation's tracking.
What is understood from the documents is that the attempt to rob 30 million euros was predetermined and did not change after the meetings in June with the Turkish company.
Opening tenders for public contracts and concessions without studies and projects has become a governance philosophy in recent years.
There was no study in the procedure for the concession of the Port of Vlora, nor in the expansion of the Tirana-Durrës highway or in the revised Thumanë-Kashar contract, where a study should have been done from scratch.
In some cases, resistance to budgeting funds without a technical project has cost finance ministers their jobs.