The Special Prosecution Office against Corruption and Organised Crime (SPAK) announced on Tuesday, 16 July 2024, that 8 arrest warrants had been issued over abuses connected to Tirana’s waste-management concessionaire. SPAK accuses them of acting as a “structured criminal group” involved in a scheme to launder around 20 million euros. None was arrested, however, because police did not find them in Albania.

Preliminary investigations into the operations of concessionaire Integrated Energy BV SPV at Tirana’s Sharra waste-disposal site have brought to light a money-laundering scheme that, according to SPAK, was directed by controversial entrepreneurs Mirel Mërtiri and Klodian Zoto. The two had been convicted in absentia by the Special Court over a similar scheme involving the Elbasan concessionaire; Zoto had also been convicted in the Fier case.

“The criminal activity of laundering the proceeds of crime appears to have been carried out continuously from the moment the concession contract was signed, using various mechanisms and arrangements established by the organisers of this criminal activity, with Albanian and foreign nationals participating and acting together in the specific form of a structured criminal group,” SPAK stressed.

On this basis, SPAK has sought the arrest of 3 foreign nationals, Giuseppe Ciaffaglione, Marc Lapat and Michael Drujits, and 5 Albanians, Dashamir Ymeraj, Denisa Tollkuçi, Renardo Nallbani, Ilir Dedja and Endrit Habilaj.

The three foreign nationals are identified as former executives of the Dutch company GeoGenix BV, which, according to SPAK, Mërtiri and Zoto used as a shell to conceal ownership of concessionaire Integrated Energy BV SPV.

Tollkuçi was the administrator of Tirana’s concessionaire, Nallbani the administrator of Elbasan concessionaire Albtek Energy, while Ymeraj and Dedja are entrepreneurs.

Ymeraj’s name was mentioned in 2022 in an allegation by the opposition concerning a tax-evasion scheme involving 24 companies.

One name that stands out on the list is journalist Habilaj, formerly the creator of an investigative programme on one of Albania’s national television channels.

The group faces four charges: fraud, money laundering, a structured criminal group, and activity within a criminal group.

Concessions that “burn” public money

Tirana’s waste-management concession received the go-ahead after Tirana Municipality presented the government with the need to expand the Sharra waste-disposal site.

Following this, in 2017, through an unsolicited proposal, controversial entrepreneurs Mirel Mërtiri and Klodian Zoto secured the 30-year concession to manage and expand the disposal site, rehabilitate the area and build a waste incineration plant to generate energy.

The project required 128 million euros in investment, but the works were not completed and the waste incineration plant never entered operation.

The arrangement proved similar to the two other waste-management concessions in Fier and Elbasan, where construction had begun after 2014 under conditions of an “environmental emergency”, and which were also connected to Mërtiri and Zoto.

The opposition described the concessions as abusive and filed various criminal complaints over them during 2019–2020. SPAK decided to treat Fier, Elbasan and Tirana as separate cases.

About six months after the 2021 parliamentary elections, SPAK arrested former Environment Minister Lefter Koka, charging him with corruption and abuse of office. A year later, his former secretary, Alqi Bllako, who had become an MP, was also arrested on similar charges. Mërtiri and Zoto had been declared wanted during this period.

In the Fier case, on 25 September 2023, Koka was sentenced to 6 years and 8 months in prison and Bllako to 2 years and 8 months, after reductions under the abbreviated-trial procedure. In the Elbasan case, on 5 October 2023, Koka was sentenced to 5 years and 8 months in prison under the abbreviated-trial procedure, while Bllako was acquitted.

In the Elbasan case, on 5 October 2023, Zoto and Mërtiri were each sentenced in absentia to 6 years and 8 months in prison, after their 10-year sentences were reduced by one third under the abbreviated-trial procedure. Zoto had also been sentenced in absentia in the Fier case, on 25 September 2023, to 8 years in prison after his 12-year sentence was reduced by one third under the abbreviated-trial procedure.

SPAK took action in the Tirana case during 2023. In August, it placed the concessionaire under seizure, and in December issued 15 arrest warrants, again including former officials Koka and Bllako, as well as Taulant Tusha, the director of Public Works at Tirana Municipality. The case against them remains under investigation.