The local elections in Albania are "behind the door". In just a few months, Albanians will be called to vote for their favorites in the local government. Of course, as the elections approach, money also starts to "play". It is not a question of small values, but of figures at the level of billions.
Of course, Erion Veliaj has already started to "open the bag" of money for the construction oligarchs. It is about a tender with reference number REF-41118-09-09-2022 and object "Construction of the Northern Public Transport Terminal, Tirana".
Its limit fund is 820,177,697 new ALL without VAT or about 10 billion old ALL. If we look at the documentation of this procedure, we will notice that 10 economic operators or associations of operators participated in the competition.
It can be seen that two operators participated just as per number after offering zero ALL. This is where the suspicions arise that we are dealing with a tender where the winner was predetermined by Veliaj. On the other hand, it can be seen that 4 participating operators offered lower numbers than the winner.
This case also reinforces the suspicions that we are dealing with a predetermined winner. In the meantime, the winner was declared the union of economic operators "NOVA Construction 2012" shpk owned by Ilir and Kujtim Shtufi & "Ante-Group" shpk owned by Enka Merko, Gjysho Merko, Kristjan Merko, Entela Merko and Bardhjus Bushaj for the value of 723,315,114 new ALL without VAT or about 8.7 billion old ALL with VAT.
Converted into euros, this figure is approximately 7.3 million. On the other hand, the winning figure turns out to be as much as 88% of the tender's limit fund, further adding to the doubts that we are dealing with a predetermined winner. It seems that Veliaj has already "seriously" started distributing money for the election campaign.
