Calls Mount For Probe into Albania’s CEZ Scandal

After BIRN lifted the lid on graft allegations against Albanian speaker Ilir Meta and a utility company, Meta and the opposition Democrats have called for an international probe.

Gjergj Erebara

BIRN

Tirana

	Ilir Meta. Photo: LSI

Albania's main opposition Democratic Party and the junior ruling coalition partner, the Socialist Movement for Integration, have called for an “international” or “American” probe into allegations that local politicians received kickbacks from a contractor of the Czech power giant CEZ.
CEZ had a controlling stake in Albania’s power utility OSHEE, then called CEZ Shperndarje, from 2009 to 2014, before the company was sold back to the Albanian government.
BIRN revealed earlier this month that the Speaker of Parliament Ilir Meta was identified in an international arbitrage case as one of the politicians that benefited from illegal financial transfers in 2010 from a debt-collecting company working for CEZ Albania, which Meta helped secure a contract with the Czech power company.
A law firm has alleged that Meta received bribes from Debt International Advisory, DIA, a debt-collection company currently in dispute with the state power utility OSHEE in the Vienna Arbitral Center.
Following publication of the investigation, the Democratic Party called for Meta’s resignation while on Thursday it announced a bill that would open up the possibility of a probe by international prosecutors.
“We know that the [Prime Minister] Edi Rama and Ilir Meta will not allow a thorough and unbiased investigation from the country's prosecution,” Democratic Party MP Eduard Halimi said on Thursday.
“Only an investigation with international prosecutors with full authority to control and analyze the whole affair unaffected by those two persons included in this affair... will bring justice over this scandal worth hundreds of millions of euro,” Halimi added.
Responding to the allegations, Meta, who denies wrongdoing, also called for an international probe, underlining that he preferred US prosecutors.
“I strongly support the idea of an unbiased, fast and thorough international probe into the whole CEZ affair, from its first day in our country till today," he said.
"I also call on all party leaders to ask especially for the United States to be engaged in the clarification of this issue and to create a special jurisdiction with American investigators,” Meta added.
The US embassy in Tirana rebuffed his proposal. Following media inquiries, a spokesperson said that any investigation had to be conducted by the Albanian authorities.
The CEZ group bought the Albanian electricity distribution network in 2009 and withdrew its investment in 2014, agreeing to sell back its shares to the state for about 100 million euros.
On Friday, the Democratic Party said also that it will ask the Constitutional Court to nullify the buyback agreement, claiming that, by signing it, Albania forfeited its right to obtain hundreds of millions of euro in damages allegedly caused by CEZ to Albania.
Over the four years that CEZ controlled electricity distribution, it is believed to have engaged in several fraudulent debt collection schemes that cost Albania millions of euro.
One scheme relates to an agreement between CEZ and DIA, which it appears was intended to influence Albanian politicians and the Energy Regulatory Agency, ERE, through bribes.