The story behind the waste lost between Italy and Macedonia reveals a reality full of doubts for the public, which, as always, doesn’t know how to differentiate between the guilty and the innocent. The public judges things based on personal political beliefs dismissing the facts still unknown for most.
Let us list the facts known until now:
- An Italian online news channel with a tradition in environmental investigation, Pianeta Italia, published that around 2,600 containers containing special waste from different areas of Italy were shipped to a dump site in Macedonia, managed by an Italian company. This company had offered its waste treatment services to many big Italian waste companies. Pianeta Italia claims that from 2,600 shipped containers, around 1,200 have reached Macedonia, while the other ones passed transit in Durrës without ever reaching their destination. This seems to suggest that 1,400 containers could have been smuggled illegally into Albania.
- In Albania, there exists a degraded institutional reality and a secret collaboration between state elements on every level with crime, including criminal organizations that control the cultivation and international trafficking of cannabis and other types of drugs. In Italy, there is a reality of waste trade (special or not) and a failed tradition of depositing waste in dump sites controlled by crime (Terra dei Fuochi in Campania) or dumping it in the sea (Calabria and Puglia). These activities produce profits that are not as seductive as those of the drug trade organized in Italy by the same criminal groups engaged in drug trafficking in Albania.
- There has been a typical reaction from the Albanian online media close to the government, attempting to deny the source of the allegations, while claiming that the Italian site was unknown and its director was not even a journalist, but a senator who was charged with corruption. In fact, the owner of this website is a former Italian senator and the director is his wife, a journalist. The senator has a long and rich political experience, he was head of Commission for Senate Protection in Italy and head of Italian parliamentary delegation to the NATO, so it would be hard to say that he is a person without influence. On the contrary, he surely has privileged access to different investigative institutions and it is unlikely that he has made the news public to slander the Rama government for the benefit of a third party.
- It is certain that there are decisions of several municipalities close to Bari to export some categories of waste to the Drislla waste deposit, close to Skopje. This deposit has been object of harsh polemics in Macedonia, as it was created through a public–private partnership with a completely unknown Italian company that has made large private investments in the site.
- The news was shown on other Italian media and Greek CNN. The attempt to “kill” the news at source instead of presenting clear counter proofs failed immediately as the same Italian news site started to discover other aspects of the case.
- During last months, there has been a series of visits in Albania of high functionaries serving in the Italian justice system and the highest chiefs of Guardia di Finanzia. These unusually frequent visits were lauded by the pro-government media, considering them as signs of support from the Italian government for the Albanian police and its strategy against drugs. The Italian side has not confirmed or ascertained these “reasons.” In fact, official Italian sources have remained silent on the waste issue or the recent visit of the chief of Guardia di Finanza. The visit of the latter hasn’t been announced or mentioned by the official website of Guardia di Finanza, which normally reports even the most insignificant news about the institution’s activities. This silence implies that the reason of the visit was not to encourage former Minister Tahiri, as was often proclaimed by the usual sources from the Albanian government, but instead to check the true disposition of Albanian authorities to collaborate on the waste investigation. In fact, the Prosecutor’s Office in Durrës has launched an investigation on waste disappearances that was passed on to the office of the prosecutor for serious crimes because of the suspicion that the activities are conducted by “a structured criminal group.”
- There is “near contradiction” between the Albanian customs who admit that 1140 containers have entered Durrës to later reach Macedonia while their declarations (i.e., accompanying documents of shipping, but no physical verification) state that these contained mainly food products, but no waste. This raises doubts about the formulation of the declaration as well as the amount of imported food coming from (just) Italy, which seems huge for the market size of Macedonia.
- The Ministry of Environment clarifies some doubts when it shows a list of transit authorizations through Albania to Macedonia and Kosovo for different categories of special waste (mainly used tires) but not destined for the deposit in Drislla and not in such large quantities.
- There is an unrelenting will of the Albanian government to approve the import of waste to be used as primary material in different recycling activities, despite strong opposition from various environmental groups. The waste import was approved from the majority of the government, but was refused by President Nishani, who returned the law to Parliament for reapproval, after which it was several times suddenly removed from the calendar of the parliament. Maybe by chance or not, the government has passed a law that deals with the treatment of radioactive waste, that is not produced in Albania but is allowed to transit.
- n the last two years, there has been an unusual and doubtful number of PPP projects licensed by the government for construction of waste transferring and burning facilities in Elbasan, Fier, and Tirana. These investments cannot be justified by the low amount of waste that is produced inside the country and construction of three similar plants close to each other doesn’t make economic sense (excluding the scenario when the material that would be treated is coming from abroad). Furthermore, these investments have been granted to the same Italo-Albanian company (with the participation of an Albanian partner that doesn’t have enough legal capital), which in turn is fully owned by a Dutch postbox company, which makes it impossible to know who are beneficiary owners. It is also worth mentioning that in the Tirana business scene an unofficial version is circulating that important members of the Rama government are behind the Dutch company.
In the best-case scenario, there is the hypothesis that organized Italian subjects well connected to politics in Albania, after finding out about high degree of profits possible from burning Italian waste, have jumped in in order to profit from a deficient legal and logicistical infrastructure in Albania. Because of the delays caused by the opposition against the waste law they have had to accept the first shipping not to lose clients. They would be assured with the guarantee that waste import into Albania would be allowed, and it seems they have used illegal and irresponsible ways to achieve this.
In the worst-case scenario, we are dealing with a complex international criminal scheme supported by an uncontrollable greed of a voracious and absolutely irresponsible political class in Albania.
Naturally, until now we only have a theory with many data, but we have reasons to fear that soon we will have hard evidence.
It is ridiculous when you think about a technique used by a “great Albanian master of journalism,” who, in a desperate effort to portray Rama government as clean, publishes the denial sent by the heads of deposit in Macedonia where the lost waste was supposed to end up. According to them, they have not imported a kilogram of waste. The news is published without additional comment, thinking that it is denying the published news in Italy but forgetting that the interviewed directors of the waste deposit are part of the same Italian company that has collected the waste from the Bari region that went missing in Albania.
That is the same as asking Toto Riina whether the mafia exists or not!
