Eurasia Press & News
Government’s claim to be leading crackdown on illegal builds hides an important fact – that such violators are often well connected to the ruling Socialist Party.
rampant illegal construction, including in Tirana city centre, accusing his critics of being potentially corrupt themselves.
“You that blindly raise allegations might have thousands of reasons for not voting me or for thinking that politicians are all alike; but if you fail to see my full will to once and forever beat this shameful phenomenon … you are either not taking yourself seriously or are potentially corrupt yourself,” Rama said.
Rama several weeks ago acknowledged that developers – including some that are behind a controversial plan to build skyscrapers in the centre of Tirana – had added entire floors beyond the permits issued by the government or the Mayor of Tirana, Erjon Veliaj.
This condemnation of illegal construction is seen by many Albanians as shameless hypocrisy on the part of the authorities, who over the last few years have jailed hundreds of people for illegal constructions, including in some cases farmers arrested on the spot for building shacks for animal husbandry.
Meanwhile none of the large developers that Rama acknowledges have overbuilt has been arrested. And even though their illegal construction has been identified, work seems to continue normally in these buildings.
On September 30, Rama’s campaign against high-profile illegal construction focused on an apartment block on Tirana’s Myslym Shyri Street.
Bledi Cuci, Minister of Interior, appeared in a video aired as a “live broadcast” along with Rebani Jaupi, the police director and the Director of the National Inspectorate for the Protection of the Territory, IKMT, Dallendyshe Bici.
The video, apparently shot by the government’s PR officials, was also aired on the Prime Minister personal Facebook page.
“This company not only illegally added floors but made a scandalous change to the project from the one that was approved,” Minister Cuci said, standing in front of the building and promising that the illegal extra space would be confiscated. “What we are doing here it is not a media campaign or demagogy,” he claimed.
However, when BIRN visited the construction site where the alleged crime was identified, just minutes after this “live” broadcast was aired on Facebook, no policemen were to be seen. Construction workers were carrying on with their work as normal.
The street that in the video was shown as empty was full of parked cars. Apparently, the video had been shot earlier.
This was no surprise. Government officials in Albania often do not invite media crews to such events but use their own PR officials to prepare “news”. This is then aired by TV stations that do not mention that it has been pre-packaged and that no independent reporting is involved.
The government on September 7 declared that it planned to confiscate any extra floors added to projects with official permits and use the space for social purposes, such as housing homeless people.
But the opposition claims the initiative is a disinformation campaign that aims to hide the fact that the developers in question, in some cases well-known names often labelled as oligarchs, face no legal consequences.
The Prime Minister in turn claims that courts and prosecutors are not acting fast enough.
The case of the building at Myslym Shyri, one of the most expensive areas in Tirana, appears to lend credibility to the PM’s critics.
Data obtained by BIRN shows that the apartment block denounced by the Minister of Interior is owned by “ARB & TRANS-2010”, a company founded by Arben Maloku, 36, who until September 9 was an administrator of the Zall-Herr administrative unit, appointed to the position by the Mayor of Tirana Erjon Veliaj, who signed the permit of the building.
Maloku also chairs the local office of the ruling Socialist Party for Zall-Herr, a rural area in the north of Tirana.
When BIRN asked whether the government had referred the company for prosecution following the assessment that it had built illegally, Minister Cuci failed to respond by time of publication.
Questions sent to the State Police and the Inspectorate chief, Dallendyshe Bici, also went unanswered. Mayor Veliaj didn’t respond to questions regarding his connections with Maloku.
Esmeralda Maloku, a representative of the company, said she was aware of the statement of the minister but had no comment to make on the issue.
No charges filed for violating permit
Nestled between two communist-era apartment blocks, the new building developed by “ARB & TRANS-2010” is described as “Services and houses 4, 5 and 9 floors, with two underground parking floors”.
While denouncing the added floors, Cuci described the developer as “a brave one” and blamed the affair on the “old justice [system]”, blaming prosecutors and courts for failing to tackle the issue.
Moreover, while denouncing the illegal build in the video, Cuci didn’t mention either the company or the owner that had built illegally.
Furthermore, BIRN learned that none of the institutions that are part of Cuci’s ministry, such as State Police or the IKMT has filed any charges to prosecutors. Structures at the municipality, such as municipal police and the local inspectorate, who normally monitor the execution of the construction permits, have not filed charges either.
ARB & TRANS-2010 company was founded by Arben Maloku. In 2018, he sold it for 100,000 leks (800 euros) to his father-in-law Fatmir Firi. In October 2021, the latter donated the shares to Shyqyri Maloku, Arben’s father.
While the company was owned by the relatives of this Socialist Party official, it obtained a lucrative building permit and also won some 150 million leks (1.28 million euros) in public contracts during the last three years.
All the contracts were won from the Municipality of Tirana. Among the works was the construction of a stretch of water supply to Qinam village, one of the villages in the administrative unit led then by Maloku.
Although Maloku was dismissed as administrator of Zall-Herr Administrative Unit, he still seems well connected with Socialist officials, including the PM and Mayor Veliaj.
On September 9, Maloku was seen in a photo just a step behind Prime Minister Rama and Mayor Veliaj during a ceremony to inaugurate a new quarter developed through government funds in Zall Herr to shelter families left homeless by the earthquake three years ago.
At the ceremony, the Socialist Party MP for the area, Xhemal Qefalia, took extra care to single out Maloku as deserving praise for “working tirelessly”.
In the video Veliaj posted on his personal Facebook page, Qefalia said Maloku has been removed as area administrator in order to be assigned to “an office that is even more important”.
Veliaj himself thanked Maloku immediately after thanking the Prime Minister Rama. “I want to salute Ben Maloku with all my heart,” he said.
The opposition says the company also provided earthmoving equipment for the controversial destruction of the historic National Theatre in May 2020.
Ina Zhupa, an MP from the opposition Democratic Party, alleged on May 21 2020 that the company’s equipment was used without procurement procedures to remove the remains of the building following its demolition. She also suggested the company would be rewarded for this by the government with building permits.
“What building permits will you grant to this company as reward for its work in the demolition of the National Theatre?” she asked rhetorically, after noting the connection between the company and the administrator of Zall Herr.
Old justice, new allegations
In early September, when it launched its campaign, the government said illegally built floors would have to be donated to the state in exchange for the legalization of the building, or else the developers would have to pay an extra fine.
However, the opposition claims that the measure is a ruse without legal base that aims to effectively grant an amnesty to violators of the law. Building illegally in Albania is punishable by up to eight years in prison.
Aiming to counter these allegations, Rama and Cuci both insisted prosecutors had failed to prosecute violators and that their decision was a response to the fact that prosecutors had failed to act.
“When they handle files from companies enriched through fiscal evasion, or illegal construction or other crimes, they [the prosecutors] see an opportunity to fatten their own pockets,” Cuci said in the Facebook video shot in Myslym Shyri Street.
The minister claimed that while government agencies had their own responsibilities, the fault lay mostly in the justice system. However, he didn’t mention any concrete case in which government agencies had filed charges and the justice system had failed to act.
Arens Cela, chief prosecutor of Tirana, dismissed the minister’s allegations. He said the authorities had not referred charges in the past while prosecutors had started to work ex officio on the cases denounced publicly lately.
Meanwhile, Rama claimed that Ideal Construction, the company developing a tower in Tirana’s Skanderbeg Square, named the Eye of Tirana, had already agreed to sign a contract about the addition of 4,600 sqm to the original plan.
However, Rama has not published the contract, which critics say has no legal value anyway since the illegal buildings do not exist legally and as such, cannot be sold or gifted.
On September 30, Rama published two documents which showed that IKMT officials had referred Armand Lilo, owner of Ideal Construction, for prosecution on July 1 – but that prosecutors had not acted.
“This is not the only case where justice failed to act regarding the moneyed ones caught red-handed by the State Police, by the Tax and Custom offices or by the National Inspectorate for the Protection of the Territory,” Rama said, alleging corruption among justice officials.
Cela, the prosecutor, however told BIRN that the referral of the case of the “Eye of Tirana” was under investigation. “This is one of the ongoing cases,” he said shortly, adding that he didn’t want to be dragged into political debates.
