The company Alko Impex, belonging to Arbër Abazi, nephew of Socialist MP Sadri Abazi, has been disqualified for 1–3 years from public procurement procedures for filing documentation containing fake information. This was announced in a Public Procurement Agency (APP) decision. The decision cites other reasons for this ban including corruption, previous criminal sentences, failure to fulfill penal obligations.
The APP decision came after the Elbasan municipality fact-checked the documentation filed by the company for its bid for the “cleaning and tree-planting in Elbasan city” tender.
The Elbasan municipality asked the University of Prishtina to verify Bekim Selmani’s diploma, filed by the company. According to UP’s response, the company has filed a falsified diploma. Exit reported on the company’s use of falsified documentation recently.
After it was revealed that the documentation was falsified the Elbasan municipality opened a criminal case against the company. Meanwhile, the latter filed a request to withdraw from the tender “for objective reasons,” even though the Commission for Public Procurement (KPP) had announced it was the winner.
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.
The company Alko Impex Construction has been awarded €10.8 million in tenders by 7 Socialist-run municipalities, from 2014 to 2017. The tenders mainly concerned city cleaning and tree-planting. Six of the company’s concessionary contracts have been awarded by the Tirana municipality, two of which concerned the cleaning of Tirana Area III, priced at respectively €4.9 million and €4.1 million and were awarded for the 2016-2017 period. Furthermore, only a few days ago, the company also presented a bid for the Kamza municipality tender concerning the cleaning of the city, using the same falsified documents.
