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SPAK's claim about the Tirana incinerator, Xama: The contracting authority has not yet seen the abuses

SPAK's claim about the Tirana incinerator, Xama: The contracting authority

The Special Prosecution Office announced today its claim regarding the Tirana incinerator, requesting 4 years of imprisonment for former Minister of Environment, Lefter Koka. Prosecutor Dritan Prençi also requested the removal of the right to exercise public functions for Koka for five years.

Journalist Ola Xama told MCN TV that it has not yet been found where the money went and that the authorities have not dealt with the implementation procedure.

Xama says that the contracting authority, which should have been composed of representatives of the Ministry of Environment and the Municipality of Tirana and controlled the project, did not see or pretended not to see who abused the money.

"SPAK has focused on the criminal offenses of the Tirana incinerator related to the procedure for granting the Tirana incinerator, and not to the procedure for implementing the Tirana incinerator, while we also have another part of the investigation that deals with the money laundering offenses that are thought to have been stolen from the Tirana incinerator.  

What is the lion's share, is that a procedure may have been initiated with the intention of abusing it and today we have some officials who are being held accountable, or will be held accountable in the future, depending on the decision that the court will make regarding the act of abuse of office for the Tirana incinerator. We still have not found out where the money went, the millions of euros that the state budget has given to return to taxpayers. We have not yet dealt with the implementation procedure, because it is not only the one who grants the concession, but also the one who implements it.

The feasibility study, the concession contract states that the concessionaire party must invest 128 million euros for 7 years. It is not the fault of the one who said I agree to invest 128 million euros, the fault is of the one who allowed this money to be stolen and not invested. And the one who is the monitoring eye, and in this case the contracting authority, is a structure, was the Ministry of Environment and then went to the MEI where it set up the project monitoring unit. Both the MEI and the Tirana Municipality side that should have sent representatives are responsible for what happened, 100 million euros were given for waste treatment and to build an incinerator, and no one saw it or chose to pretend they didn't see it, the fault was left orphaned. We are dealing with an investigation that has been going on for 4 years. "The theft of soil and inert materials deposited by builders also occurred during 2023, which was the peak of SPAK's investigations ," the journalist said. 

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