A company with an owner convicted of corruption has won 15.5m euros in tenders for reconstruction.
The Court of Appeals for Serious Crimes, on November 23, 2018, sentenced businessman Ylber Kalaja to 2 and a half years in prison for corrupting senior officials of the Prisons Directorate in exchange for winning food tenders.
Together with him, the court also sentenced the former Deputy General Director of Prisons, Iljaz Labi, together with 3 administrators of other companies.
At the beginning of the investigation, the businessman Kalaja changed the name of his company from "Vllaznia" to "Dajti Park 2007" and after being sentenced by the court, at the end of 2018 he donates 50% of the shares to his son Desart Kalaja and the rest to Lulzim Qefalia , brother of former Socialist MP Xhemal Qefalia.
Although with administrator and owner convicted of corruption, the company continues to win millions from food tenders and after the 2019 earthquake, another of its specialties became construction.
From the Albanian Development Fund through a union of operators, "Dajti Park 2007" has won 3 contracts worth 11 million euros, while from the municipality of Tirana has won the drafting of the reconstruction project in the plant area worth 4.5 million euros.
The law on public procurement prohibits the participation in tenders of companies that have a partner convicted of corruption and serious criminal offenses or of persons who may have control over a company decision-making.
This has not prevented "Dajti Park 2007" to be one of the 6 companies that have benefited the most from the reconstruction tenders.
The non-transparent procedures drafted by the Ministry of Reconstruction for procurement in this area have been severely criticized by the International Monetary Fund, but although there have been criticisms, none of these decisions have been corrected.
The government itself has not received any of the loans offered by donors in February 2020 at the Brussels conference, allowing itself to have no controlling body for tenders./Euronews Albania