The company Alko Impex, whose several infracions concerning public tenders by the Tirana, Elbasan, Dibra, and other municipalities have been revealed lately, has also used falsified documentations to compete for a tender in the Kavaja municipality.
Exit has procured the documents filed for the tender worth approximately €1 million, for “the clean-up and maintenance of Kavaja city” during a 3-year period.
Description of the tender
The Kavaja municipality opened the tender for “the clean-up and maintenance of Kavaja city,” with a funding limit of €1,092,000 on January 22, 2016 and closed it on February 15, 2016. There were 6 bids.
On March 23, 2016, the Kavaja municipality announced that the winner was the company Alko Impex, which had made a bid of €1,035,000, that is, 95% of the funding limit.
Below, find all the violations committed by the company owned by the nephew of Socialist MP Sadri Abazi during the process of this tender:
- One of the tender’s technical criteria consisted in the company having had previous experience performing similar services in the last three years, at an average price of €437,000.
In order to prove that it fulfilled this criterion, the company had to present a contract and all the necessary attestations. To this purpose, Alko Impex presented a contract it had signed with the Prishtina municipality in 2013.
According to the documentations filed by Alko Impex, the contract with the Prishtina municipality, for “the clean-up of city streets and sidewalks,” extended from April 15, 2013 to April 15, 2015, that is, 2 years. According to Alko Impex, the contract was worth €14,600 per week, or €60,000 per month.
However, a look into Kosova’s Public Procurement System (KRPP), where all the announcements for public tender contracts are found, reveals that this contract was actually worth €4596.1, a third of the value reported by Alko Impex.
Additionally, according to official documentation, the contract only lasted 7 months, from April 15 to November 15, 2013, rather than 2 years, as Alko Impex claims.
It is, therefore, clear that Alko Impex falsified the documentation regarding its previous contract with the Prishtina municipality, in order to fulfill the criteria set forth by the Kavaja municipality tender.
- Another tender criteria was the employment of a chemical engineer with at least 5 years of experience. In order to fulfill this criteria, the company had to file a university degree, with a Chemical Engineering major, belonging to one of its employees.
Alko Impex filed a Chemical Engineering university degree belonging to Kosovar citizen, Naim Beqir Pllana. The degree presented by Alko Impex contains the following information:
“Mitrovica no.243, dated 01.06.2000 t2 University of Prishtina College of Natural Sciences to Mr. Naim Beqir Pllana. Signed by Dean Prof. Shefqet Rashani, PhD.”
However, the Kavaja municipality inquired further at the University of Prishtina regarding this diploma, and received the following response:
Regarding the inquiry you sent us via email regarding the verification of the authenticity of Naim Beqir Pllana’s diploma we would like to inform you that:
There is no file on Naim Beqir Pllana in the College of Natural-Mathematical Sciences archives.
The College of Natural-Mathematical Sciences did not offer a Chemistry degree track in Mitrovica and Prof. Shefqet Rashani, PhD has never been a Dean. The diploma presented to you may have been falsified by the candidate or someone else.
The aforementioned student does not even appear in the protocol book where all alumni data are recorded.
Therefore, Alko Impex has also falsified the diploma of one of its employees.
This is the second known time that Alko Impex has falsified one of its employees’ diploma. Earlier, in tenders awarded by the Elbasan and Tirana municipalities, Alko Impex used a fake diploma for one of its employees, Bekim Selmani. Selmani himself spoke to the media, distancing himself from the scandal, and claiming that the company had used his credentials without his consent or awareness. He stated that his personal information and his diploma have been misused by Alko Impex and he would take all the proper legal steps to fight back.
The company has used the same falsified documentation in at least two other tenders awarded in 2014 and 2017 by the Tirana municipality concerning the “Area III clean up.” Consequently, these tenders are illegal.
