There has been visible discontent with Albania’s government in recent weeks, with protestors hurling petrol bombs at government buildings and calling out Prime Minister Edi Rama by name, according to a new report by Reuters.
The unrest follows the disclosure in December that Albania’s special prosecution office, SPAK, had indicted Deputy Prime Minister Belinda Balluku on suspicion of interfering in the awarding of two state construction contracts worth more than €200 million, according to the report.
The allegations focus on two tenders: one for a highway tunnel and another for part of a ring road around Tirana. Prosecutors accuse Balluku of steering the process to favor specific companies, with SPAK alleging she had “predetermined the winner” and “created unfair advantages and privileges,” Reuters said.
In the indictment, prosecutors cite text messages between Balluku and colleagues, including the director of the Albanian Road Authority, who has also been indicted. In one message dated September 10, 2021, Balluku appears to ask the director to meet an official from NOVA Construction 2012, the news agency said.
Four days after that meeting, NOVA entered a contract with two other firms to form a consortium that later won the ring road contract, Reuters reported.
The scandal and subsequent protests risk complicating Rama’s stated ambition to join the EU by 2030. Albania began accession talks in 2022 and, on Nov. 17 last year, opened the final round of topics for discussion as one of the frontrunners in the bloc’s Balkans enlargement project, Reuters said.
Three days later, SPAK announced Balluku’s indictment, according to the report.
“Albania has to understand that to become an EU member, respecting the rule of law is a prerequisite,” Andi Hoxhaj, a Balkan expert at King’s College London, told the news agency. “That has to hit home, or it will not look good with the EU.”
In response to a query from Reuters, Rama’s spokesperson defended his record, saying Albania “deserves to join” the EU and that fighting corruption “with no second thoughts” is among the reasons.
Not everyone agrees that the nation has taken a hard line against crime, however. An investigative report published in November by Follow the Money and its media partner BLAST concluded that Albanian organized-crime groups have embedded themselves in state institutions and transport record quantities of drugs through EU hubs.
Former police inspector Dritan Zagani, who fled to Switzerland after a 2015 detention, told the news outlets that “criminal groups have infiltrated all spheres of the state” and that Albania has become a “narco-state.”
The report paints Rama, not as anti-corruption crusader, but as willing facilitator to drug trafficking and other criminal activity.
“The country is completely plagued by corruption and run by Rama and his close associates,” Albania’s former vice-president Arben Ahmetaj told the news agencies. “I do not understand why Europe turns a blind eye to the reality of the situation.”
Read more at Reuters