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Hundreds of thousands of euros were paid to Tony Blair to advise Balluk and Rama

2023-01-31 07:52:11Fokus SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

Hundreds of thousands of euros were paid to Tony Blair to advise Balluk and Rama

Villa 30 in the area of ​​the former Block in Tirana has a dark past as the place where former communist Albanian Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu - facing the risk of arrest and imprisonment - killed himself.

Today, as a reminder, in the courtyard of the government-owned villa are statues of Lenin and Stalin as well as a Zis 69, a vehicle that was the favorite of the Communist-era secret police "Security" for making arrests in the middle of the night.

Everyone today can wonder what Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, thought when he saw this decor while being hosted by the Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama, on April 19 of last year.

Little was communicated publicly about the meeting. However, two months later, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, TBI, published a job offer for a councilor in Tirana, in support of improving Albanian government services through the application of technology and innovation.

Three months later, in September 2022, TBI announced another vacancy – for a senior advisor to the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Albania.

This is not the first time Blair, who left office in 2007, has worked with Rama. When the Socialists came to power in 2013, Blair was hired as an adviser.

What such work entails is unclear, as the contracts are not publicly available. But both the Albanian government and Blair say that the service comes for free.

However, the former British Prime Minister is not the only Blair who worked for the Albanian government. During the same period, a law firm run by his wife Cherie received hundreds of thousands of euros from the government for services rendered. Such a coincidence is observed to have happened in Serbia as well.

Local experts say this, and the lack of transparency regarding TBI contracts, should set alarm bells ringing.

In the case of Albania "this puts Mr. Rama and Mr. Blair in a clientelistic relationship," says Rigels Xhemollari, an anti-corruption activist and executive director of Qendresa Cittare, an organization based in Tirana.

Afrim Krasniqi, executive director of the Institute of Political Studies, a research organization in Tirana, told BIRN: "In a normal practice of the rule of law, this whole process should be investigated."

"The government's only statement that the consultant did not benefit financially from the Albanian state is insufficient, speculative and creates even more doubts about the content of the contract and the type of commitment."

TBI and Omnia Strategy, Cherie Blair's company, which provides specialist services in international dispute resolution and arbitration, denied any conflict of interest.

"Mrs. Blair's law firm has represented the Government of Albania many times and has every right to do so," TBI told BIRN. "This is a legal practice that has nothing to do with the work of the TBI."

Omnia Strategy said: "The work of Omnia, in Albania or elsewhere, has nothing to do with the work of TBI."

The Government of Albania did not respond to a request for comment.

Omnia's profitable arbitrage jobs

Blair founded TBI in 2016, providing consulting services to governments to "help political leaders build open, inclusive and prosperous societies in an increasingly interconnected world," according to its website. In 2021, it had 437 employees, head office in London and three international centers in Accra, Singapore and San Francisco.

A not-for-profit organisation, the institute had a turnover of 81 million pounds in 2021. Most of its work is funded by private foundations, which, until last April, included the European Council for Tolerance and Reconciliation, ECTR, founded by Russian billionaire Moshe Kantor. The TBI severed relations with the ECRT after Russia's attack on Ukraine, when Kantor was placed under sanctions in the UK due to his ties to the Kremlin.

Earlier in 2020, Blair was rumored as a potential mediator between Serbia and Kosovo on an abandoned agreement to exchange territories and clarify relations between them.

John Bolton, former National Security Adviser to ex-President Donald Trump, told BIRN in an interview that Blair, who was in power in 1999 when Britain took part in NATO air strikes against the rest of Yugoslavia during the war in Kosovo - had offered to serve as an "informal mediator" between the two parties. Rama was reported at the time to be supportive of the territory swap deal, a claim he vehemently denied.

Blair's last job in Albania also coincided with his wife's: Albanian Treasury records, seen by BIRN, show that the country's finance ministry made three payments to Omnia Strategy between September 13 and 19, 2022, for a total of 418 thousand euros.

The records do not specify what these payments were for, while Omnia Strategy confirmed that it has received the money, without giving explanations for what. The London-based law firm has previously represented Albania in a number of arbitration cases before international courts.

The first, in 2012, saw Omnia Strategy representing Albania in a dispute with an American-based company, with a legal services bill worth €300,000.

In 2015, the company received 645,000 euros from the Government of Albania for legal advice on a contentious dispute with a consortium consisting of the American company Rapiscan Systems and the local company S2. Then in 2018, Omnia Strategy was hired by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Albania for an investment dispute with the Italian company Valeria Italia Srl, for which it was paid 200 thousand euros.

"Omnia was hired by Albania with merit, to act on referred cases after a competitive procurement process and subsequently delivered positive results in all three cases," Omnia Strategy told BIRN in a written response to this news.

Both TBI and Omnia Strategy have also worked for Serbia: TBI was engaged in 2015 to help improve the digital services provided by the government, while Omnia Strategy was listed in 2021 as the responsible lawyer in a case brought by three telecommunications companies against Serbia.

The TBI spokesperson confirmed that the organization continues to work with the government of Serbia, free of charge.

"Neither Tony Blair nor the institute receives money from the government of Albania or Serbia for this work."

The consultancy's work has previously drawn criticism from human rights activists.

In 2013, Hugh Williamson, director for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch, drew attention to a two-year, £16m contract in Kazakhstan and criticized Blair for not raising concerns about the regime's human rights abuses. autocratic of the country's then president Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Court records show that Omnia Strategy has previously also represented the government of Montenegro in a dispute with Addiko Bank AG over a law for the conversion of loans granted in Swiss francs.

The firm has also represented the Ukrainian company Sardich, which filed a lawsuit seeking €350 million in compensation from North Macedonia after losing a mining concession contract in 2019.


Në përputhje me standarded JTI

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