Following on from the revelation that Amant Josifi the Advisor to the Minister of Defense Olta Xhacka is allegedly involved in an international call centre scam, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project then revealed that he is linked to the Prime Minister Edi Rama’s brother Olsi.
The OCCRP wrote that Olsi co-owned a telecommunications and telemarketing firm called Pegasus Communications Shpk, until Josifi sold his shares in December 2017.
They also noted that Josifi’s mother is a former judge who is now in a role as the Commissioner for the Oversight of the Civil Service- an individual who is tasked with protecting government employees rights.
In a previous article, Exit explained how Milton Group head office is located in Kyiv, Ukraine and its CEO Jakol Keslemen travels the world, posting pictures of himself with guns and luxury cars. The company rings unsuspecting clients all over the world and bullies them into making significant ‘investments’ that do not exist. The victims never see a penny of their money ever again.
The OCCRP reported that the hidden owner of the unscrupulous company is a Georgian man with Israeli citizenship- David Todua.
Todua is usually surrounded by bodyguards carrying an arsenal of weapons. He was arrested in June 2018 in Ukraine after being stopped at the airport with hundreds of thousands of dollars in undeclared cash. While there are no official documents linking Todua to Milton Group, he does own the payment platform Naspay that was used to handle payments from victims of the scam.
At a Christmas party that Todua, Kesleman and Josifi attended, they all posed for a photo, surrounded by henchmen. Then Keselman, Todua, and Romanko attended another event also in December at the Plaza Hotel, where they took a photo for Instagram, accompanied by the hashtag “#newyearstuffparty”.
An undercover reporter in Tirana was also able to witness senior Milton Group employees coming out of Josifi’s premises in Tirana, including Andrii Romanko- a close associate of Keselman, also pictured in the Tirana photo.
Josifi told the OCCRP journalist that he did own a call centre in Albania and that he had attended the Milton Group party in Kyiv. He denied that he was formally tied to the Group and said that his presence in Kyiv at that time was a “coincidence” and he was only invited because he was acquainted with Todua.
He insisted to the OCCRP that the references to an Albanian call centre made at the party were not referring to his own.
In a global scam where the beneficial owners of dubious companies hide behind well-placed fronts, one has to wonder why Olsi Rama’s name was brought up.
