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The call from Rome "sealed" his fate! Is Julian Hodaj's dismissal related to the $140 million "Smart City" contract?

2025-12-12 17:37:12Aktualitet SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
The call from Rome "sealed" his fate! Is Julian Hodaj's dismissal
Julian Hodaj

When on November 12, Albanian media broadcast a video of an angry phone call from Edi Rama on the streets of Rome, Julian Hodaj's fate had just been decided. Coincidentally or intentionally, the official announcement came exactly a month after the phone call, as this Friday, Edi Rama signed Hodaj's dismissal from the post of Deputy Minister of the Interior.

Although the motives for the dismissal may be publicly fabricated as personal reasons or to reenergize the Ministry of Order, the real reason that ate Hodaj's head is the hot $140 million contract for the Smart City project.

Julian Hodaj was reluctant to push through the controversial contract, the amount of which was increased twice. Perhaps because he understood that when the time came, he would most likely be appointed as a pear eater after the curizzi. But there is no tolerance in business.

"What did you become co-chair for? To create obstacles. What did you put yourself as co-chair for? You have set us back a year. What kind of opposition are you there for?" were the last words from Rome, which sealed Hodaj's fate.

Because he made the mistake of demanding more legal guarantees to sign off on the billionaire concession, which, in addition to the embarrassment of inflated costs and extralegal procedures, has another, perhaps greater, embarrassment: the concern of Albania's strategic partners that behind the project is a company called G42, which, although headquartered in Abu Dhabi, is suspected of having strong Chinese connections.

So Hodaj was very clear that the stakes were too high, so he sought opposition and hesitated to sign.

$140 million without a contest

In March of this year, the government sent to Parliament for approval the draft law for the ratification of a $118 million loan that Albania will receive from the Abu Dhabi Fund. The debt, with a repayment period of 15 years and an interest rate of 4 percent per year, is being taken to go back to Abu Dhabi.

Because the $118 million will go to pay an Abu Dhabi company called Presight Al Ltd, linked to G42, which will carry out the traffic monitoring project with cameras in 20 cities in the country. The $118 million contract, which together with VAT amounts to $140 million, will be awarded without tender and without any kind of competition, but by direct agreement.

So, to put it simply, the Albanian government will borrow $118 million from the Arabs to pay back to the Arabs, while Albanian citizens will be left with the burden of repaying the debt.

After the approval of the loan law, the government set up a special working group to negotiate the technical conditions of the project. The group is chaired by the IT director of the State Police and Deputy Minister of Finance Juljan Hodaj. But because the group members were hesitant to sign the hot potato that the government had served them, some of them had requested the opposition of the feasibility study, since it was a contract worth more than 100 million euros.

This is why from the streets of Rome, Rama shouted at Hodaj and the IT director at the Police on the phone, "What kind of opposition are you making that you have set us back a year?"

And the deputy minister just got the opposition he was looking for./ kapitali.al


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