Kuçedra Bankers/ How €4 billion was stolen from Patos Marinza's oil without a single lek of profit tax for the state

The theft of one of the greatest public assets of Albanians, Patos Marinza's oil, is now so flagrant that it can no longer be covered even by maneuvers in the financial balance sheets.

Official data shows that from 2006 to the end of 2023, the company Bankers Petroleum has generated 4 billion euros in net income, excluding mining royalties, from the sale of oil in Patos Marinza.

For the same period, the company, now owned by the Chinese, has declared around 800 million euros in net profits. But despite these figures, the company, which has been operating the Patos-Marinza oil field for 20 years, has not paid a single lek in profit tax to the state budget.

Bankers Petroleum continues to state that it has not yet fully recovered the costs of exploiting the field, even though the company has collected rivers of cash from oil sales.

And as the state seems powerless to discipline the company's paper spending, the consequence is the theft of billions of euros, leaving behind only rusty wells, a poisoned environment, and a dried-up reservoir.

The magic factor r

According to the concession agreement between the government and Bankers Petroleum, the Canadian company will exploit the Patos Marinza field without paying profit tax until it fully recovers the invested costs, or otherwise the so-called r-factor exceeds 1.

Once this value was reached, the company would pay a 50 percent profit tax. So the profit from oil exploitation would be split 50/50 with the Albanian state.

Bankers itself had planned for the R>1 factor to be achieved by the end of 2013 and consequently the company to start paying state income tax, but this was postponed three times.

"After the postponement in 2013, the contractor's commitments predicted that the R>1 factor would be achieved within 2015, but in reality this value was not achieved even in 2016," said a report by the Albanian Supreme Audit Institution a few years ago.

However, after 2016, another 8 years passed. But the r-factor never reached the value of 1, even though Bankers has made billions from oil. This makes this one of the unique cases, where a ready oil field is exploited for a full 20 years by a private person, without paying a single penny of profit tax.

The only tax that Bankers pays to the state is the mineral royalty, which is 10 percent of gross production. But the amount the company has paid for this tax is much less than the profit it has declared over the years.

In the last two years alone, the company has recorded over 110 million euros in net profits, while it is unknown where the money goes.

Bankers' record is likely to deepen further. The company is heading towards the end of its 25-year concession and with the figures recently reported, there is a risk that r will remain below level 1 until the end of the concession.

This makes Patos Marinza, one of the greatest public assets of Albanians, perhaps their greatest curse. Because the billions earned from that wealth were spent on balance sheet maneuvers, offshore invoices, theft by managers and subcontractors who declared staggering profits./Kapitali.al