US State Department’s 2020 latest report on human rights raised deep concerns about the state of corruption in Albania as did their report on money laundering. While the Transparency International report goes further by highlighting the issue of state capture in Albania which is the highest level of corruption.
Corrupted practices in Albania have increased significantly, from small bribes to provide public services to grand corruption affairs when senior officials manipulate and embezzle large sums of money.
As a post-communist country with a prolonged transition to a market economy, Albania is no stranger to grand corruption and instances of state capture.
Grand corruption continues to be fuelled by the privatization of the country’s assets and services
According to Gjergji Vurmo, co-author of the TI report;
“State capture is not just corruption. Corruption is when the state makes a tender to make a project of public importance and with fair technical conditions but one of the participants pays a bribe to be declared the winner. The capture of the state is when the public does not need this service at all, but the state decides to do this service, to make the tender specifically for only one company”, he explained during an interview with Neritan Sejamini
Instead of producing public services and goods, the state capture produces private goods for certain individuals or companies.
“At the beginning of the transition, when we were trying to set the ground rules, corruption was the norm here. When we started addressing corruption they moved on to high-level corruption. When we focused on high-level corruption, they focused on capturing institutions,” he said.
According to him, “the last decade has shown a strengthening of cooperation between politics, business, and organized crime.”
The reports also noted that the last decade had seen a strengthening of the partnerships between politics, business, and organized crime which has reached its peak in recent years.
Government contracts for select businesses with ties to prominent public officials have led to gross mismanagement of public assets, loss of life, and debt incurred by the Albanian taxpayer.
“Cooperation between political parties, public officials and organized crime groups to buy votes in local and general elections in exchange for the use of public institutions for private interests has severely damaged the integrity of the electoral process,” the report said.
“These trends continue unabated.”
It noted how politicians and their networks are controlling the state systematically to profit from corruption with impunity.
The main purpose of capturing the state is to avoid competition through the creation of monopolies which do not always aim at monetary enrichment but also at the protection of political power, it summarises.
The report states that the main sectors of the economy that have been affected by grand corruption of state capture are: energy, infrastructure (transport and waste management), defense, and health care.
The privatization of services and assets has been mired in corruption and mismanagement through contracts that have benefited the private contractor at the expense of societal development. Some of the cases mentioned are incinerators and health concessions.
The legislative process in Albania reveals significant gaps and loopholes that have over the years been used by parties with illegitimate interests and political players to tailor the outcome of the law-making process to meet their needs.
Impunity and judiciary reform continue to be the biggest concerns according to DOS and TI reports.
Within hours of the TI report being published, a smear campaign had started across some online portals. They claimed that the report was commissioned by the opposition, not linked to Transparency International, and that the authors had conflicts of interest and “hate” Prime Minister Edi Rama.
