From a phone call about firewood to pool plans and air-conditioning requests, SPAK documents trace how people close to the former deputy prime minister managed a villa that officially appears in the documents in Igli Tare’s name.
“Look, just make sure the firewood doesn’t get wet. The boss is worried!”
It was 23 December 2024. In a telephone conversation reproduced by Albania’s Special Prosecution against Corruption and Organised Crime, part of the structure known as SPAK, Alketa Pano asks whether Albert Ushe has brought the firewood inside. He tells her that three sacks have been put in the house and the others by the cupboard. When she asks again whether they are protected from the rain, he replies: “We got wet bringing the wood inside, don’t worry.”
In this conversation, Ushe was a driver, Pano a staff member, and “the boss” was Belinda Balluku, then Albania’s deputy prime minister and minister of infrastructure and energy. According to the account Ushe gave investigators, the firewood had been delivered to villa F6 in the White Rocks complex, in Gjilekë, Dhërmi, on the southern coast.
But Balluku’s name was not on the contract to purchase this villa. The name was that of Igli Tare, the former Albanian international footballer and a football executive in Italy.
The arrangements had begun the previous evening, around 7 p.m., when Ushe wrote to Balluku: “Boss, is there anything I need to pick up for down there [Dhërmi]?” She replied that there was, adding that he should also collect firewood from “Petrit’s” driver, apparently referring to Finance Minister Petrit Malaj.
Subsequent conversations identify the person who would hand over the delivery as Erald Sinani, the minister’s driver. He and Ushe appear to agree on a handover point behind the ministry.
Meanwhile, Joana Bushi was dealing with the keys. Pano, described in SPAK’s documents as a subordinate of Balluku at the Prime Minister’s Office, was following up on the storage of the firewood. Ushe was also accompanying the couple who would clean the villa in Dhërmi.
These conversations do not mean that Balluku was investigated or is being charged over firewood. They show how her close network of staff attended to her personal comforts: who received instructions, who held the villa’s keys and who looked after it.
For prosecutors, these conversations and witness accounts form part of the evidence of the use and management of an asset they suspect the former deputy prime minister had concealed in someone else’s name.
From the initial allegations to the villa in Dhërmi
Balluku had worked with Edi Rama since his time as mayor of Tirana. Her political biography records her joining the municipal staff in 2004 and later serving as the mayor’s chief of staff until 2011, when Rama lost the election to Lulzim Basha.
Then, from September 2013, when the Socialists came to power, she headed Albcontrol, the company that manages Albania’s air traffic.
In January 2019, she moved from there to lead the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy, a portfolio encompassing roads, air transport and energy. In July 2022, Rama also entrusted her with the deputy premiership. Together, these positions made Balluku one of the most influential figures in his government. Today, following a Constitutional Court ruling as well, she no longer holds either post: Parliament approved her dismissal on 5 March 2026, while on 12 March it rejected SPAK’s request for authorization to arrest her.
The investigation into Balluku began with the procurement for the Llogara tunnel, expanded to contracts for Tirana’s Outer Ring Road, and later encompassed the Albcontrol tender and assets suspected of being corrupt benefits. On 28 October 2026, the notification that the investigation into Balluku had been completed was reported.
This episode builds on our previous reporting on the Balluku case, tracing the connection prosecutors allege between the Albcontrol tender and the villa in Dhërmi.
The story of villa F6 is examined in detail in SPAK’s decision of 16 October 2026 to formally charge Eurocol, the construction company owned and managed by Pandeli Carapuli.
The documents charge the company with laundering the proceeds of crime. The prosecution alleges that Eurocol was favoured in an Albcontrol tender while Balluku headed the institution.
The villa built by the same company in Dhërmi, prosecutors allege, was the improper benefit Balluku received in return. They regard the contract in Tare’s name and a later lease to her former subordinate, Joana Bushi, as mechanisms for concealing this connection.
To support that allegation, SPAK goes back several years before the phone call about the firewood.
The pool plans in Balluku’s inbox
On 3 April 2020, at 10:18 a.m., Julian Kelo sent Balluku an email with the subject line “Pool”. The message was brief: “Good morning! I’m sending you the pool plans.”
That same evening, according to the forensic examination described in SPAK’s documents, Balluku forwarded the email to Viola Haxhiademi, a manager at Albcontrol.
On 26 May, Kelo sent Haxhiademi the cost estimate for the second phase of the pool works. He singled out tiles from the company Brunes as increasing the price and explained that no discount was available because they were specially ordered.
Kelo knew Balluku through Albcontrol. In 2014, he had been a member of the commission that evaluated bids in the tender won by Eurocol. According to employment records cited by SPAK, he continued working at Albcontrol until March 2023. In the communications about the villa, he appears to handle plans, materials, suppliers and workers.
Brunes’ sales manager states that Kelo ordered the pool materials and asked for the invoices to be issued in the name of Albanian Facility Management. Kelo, for his part, explains this as using the company’s name for the invoice and the release of the goods from the warehouse. He says Balluku and Haxhiademi had selected the tiles.
The pool was built during 2020. Satellite images described in SPAK’s documents show that it was absent in January and completed by September. It stood in the shared courtyard between villas F5 and F6, an important detail when distinguishing the work carried out and the use of the two properties.
Kelo acknowledges that Balluku and Haxhiademi asked him to oversee the pool work. But he describes his help as a favour between friends and says he had been told that Haxhiademi also had a home in the complex. The reproduced documents, meanwhile, do not appear to provide a complete account of who paid each expense.
“Belinda from F6” before Tare’s contract
Two years before the pool email, Eurocol architect Ives Durmishi was communicating with Aleksandër Semi, an economist and manager at the company.
On 19 May 2018, at 8:58 p.m., Durmishi wrote: “That Belinda from F6 called me.” He went on to describe what appears to have been her request for floor-mounted air conditioners upstairs, instead of the wall-mounted units in the plans.
In his statement, the architect says Balluku had called him about this change. He referred her to his superiors because he could not approve such changes himself. According to SPAK’s documents, a subsequent inspection of the villa found floor-mounted air conditioners upstairs.
The chronology matters here. The communication identifying Balluku with villa F6 dates from May 2018, while the agreement to purchase the villa in Tare’s name was signed on 5 December that year. Instructions for the house appear in the case file before the document naming someone else as its formal purchaser.
The contract set the price at €145,000. According to the prosecution document, €70,000 was paid on 17 December 2018, while the remaining €75,000 went unpaid. The outstanding balance is unexplained, but does not by itself prove that the remainder was waived or given as a gift.
The expert cited in SPAK’s documents values the villa at €420,000 at the time of the contract and around €720,000 in the 2026 appraisal. These are market valuations, distinct from the contract price and the payment described. The difference cannot automatically be declared the amount of a bribe.
The discrepancy between the name on the paperwork and the people looking after the villa appears again in the internet service. The June 2019 contract is in Tare’s name, while the customer contact is Kelo.
Tare states that his brother Agron arranged the internet connection, whereas Agron says he does not know who arranged the contracts. According to SPAK, Tare was not in Albania at the time. His physical absence, however, does not rule out the possibility of an authorised representative.
The criteria sent by the winning company
The connection SPAK prosecutors appear to be trying to prove in the Balluku case begins in 2014, when Albcontrol sought to renovate its building.
On 6 November, Eurocol sent Evis Berberi, then Albcontrol’s head of procurement, an email with the subject “Final Criteria Albkontrolli (2)”. Four days later, on 10 November, Balluku ordered the procurement procedure and the relevant unit formalised the criteria.
Requirements common to the company’s material and the official documents included 27 employees and two architects on staff for the period October 2011–October 2014. There were also detailed requirements for materials. The versions do not match on every point, but the email raises a clear question: why was a company that would compete for the contract sending its criteria to the head of procurement before they were approved?
Eurocol won with the highest of the four bids subsequently listed: around 72.4 million lek excluding VAT, approximately €517,000 at the average 2014 exchange rate. The three competitors were disqualified. The grounds for their exclusion repeated some of the requirements concerning licences, architects and technical documents contained in the material that had been sent.
The lowest bid was around 48.3 million lek excluding VAT, approximately €345,000. The difference cannot automatically be classified as a financial loss to Albcontrol. That would require establishing that the cheaper bid was admissible and its exclusion unlawful. The material examined here does not establish that.
Eurocol’s contract also provided for an advance of half its value. The corresponding payment was around 43.4 million lek including VAT, approximately €310,000. Balluku herself signed the contract.
Communications between the company and Berberi in December 2014 include discussion of the advance and transmission of the signed contract.
The prosecution document also records technical reasons for changes to the work and extensions to the timetable. The December 2017 handover document records no defects. Allegations of manipulation of the competition should not be confused with a finding that the building was not renovated or that the work was fictitious.
The lease and the explanations challenging the allegation
Another name runs from the tender documents to the villa alleged to belong to Balluku: Joana Bushi. In December 2014, as Balluku’s subordinate at Albcontrol, she was assigned to review a competitor’s complaint. In December 2015, she was on the commission that negotiated an addition to the contract. On 25 May 2022, she appears as the tenant renting villa F6 from Igli Tare.
The private lease set rent at €450 a month for two years, with a right to renew. An April 2024 amendment raised it to €600. SPAK’s own document describes two cash deposits of €5,400 each into Tare’s account, in June 2023 and May 2024, for the stated rent.
Those payments are part of the story. Nor do the witness accounts say only that Balluku’s family used the villa: one witness confirms that Bushi also used it. Ushe says he did not know who owned it. He referred to it as “the boss’s” villa because Balluku asked him to take family members there.
According to a Shteg report on 4 June 2026, Tare stated that he bought the villa in 2018 with lawful earnings from his work in football. Balluku, meanwhile, has denied the allegations and breaking the law. That general denial is not a specific response to each communication reproduced in the earlier documents, much less those issued in October.
SPAK considers the lease part of an effort to conceal the real owner. To prove that, however, it must explain why the arrangement was a sham, not merely why Balluku also used the house.
Instructions predating Tare’s contract and Bushi’s lease are part of the argument prosecutors are seeking to substantiate. The payments and use by the stated tenant form part of the explanation offered on the other side.
Requests to delete communications
In spring 2026, according to three statements reproduced in SPAK’s documents, Kelo asked for communications about the pool to be deleted.
The Brunes representative says he did not delete the order email because he lacked the relevant access and the invoices were in the tax records anyway.
By contrast, two other people who worked on the pool, Matild Dragoti and Ermal Keco, say they deleted communications at Kelo’s request. According to SPAK’s documents, examination of Keco’s phone showed that Kelo had enabled automatic message deletion on 4 May 2026.
These are statements about Kelo’s actions, not Balluku’s. The relevant passages in the SPAK material contain no order or indication that instructions to delete the communications came from the former deputy prime minister.
Meanwhile, prosecutors themselves identify a limit to criminal proceedings: the offence of violating equality in the historical Albcontrol tender is time-barred for Balluku, Berberi and members of the procurement unit. Prosecution for alleged active bribery by Carapuli and Eurocol is also described as time-barred.
Being time-barred means that, according to prosecutors, the legal deadline for prosecuting these offences has expired. It is not an acquittal and does not extinguish the entire case. For Eurocol, this document brings a money-laundering charge, focusing on the alleged concealment of the asset.
The file describes in detail the people who looked after F6, from air conditioners to keys and firewood. For the prosecution, the challenge is to prove the other link: that the villa was a reward for favouritism in the tender several years earlier. The reproduced communications contain no express agreement directly documenting that exchange. Prosecutors build their allegation by piecing together circumstances and documents. It remains an allegation to be proved, not guilt established by a conversation about “the boss’s” house.
The indicative euro conversions use the 2014 average exchange rate of 139.97 lek to the euro, according to the Bank of Albania. They are not conversions at the exchange rate on the payment date.