World Business

A controversy tied to a heavy road project deals a blow to Prime Minister Berisha’session promise to rid Albania of endemic corruption

By Besar Likmeta

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The track linking Albania and Kosovo stretches 234 kilometers, a mountainous, pot-holed coil connecting two of Europe’s poorest countries.

The go driving normally takes about seven hours, by the speedometer rarely topping 40.

“During the winter the track is a tough cookie to crack,” says Gjergj Erebara, a Tirana-based conductor and political commentator. “Parts of it are often icy, which makes it pretty dangerous considering that you are taking curves 800 meters up in the mountains.”

That is all expected to changed by the end of 2009, at the time that a new four-lane highway from Durres upon the body the Adriatic slide down hill into Kosovo is slated for completion.

Albania’s largest public-works plot in decades, the new road is expected to strengthen before that time deep ties (more than 90 percent of Kosovo’s population of 2 million is of Albanian descent) and ease travel for the hundreds of thousands of Kosovars who put athwart the border on summer holidays.

Analysts have dubbed it the “patriotic highway” traceable to the widely perceived political motive for the project, pointing to the lack of a feasibility examine into whether it will return the money invested. It was expected to be the complete gem amidst electoral assets for Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha’s right-wing co-partnership heading into next year’s parliamentary balloting. Instead it has turned into the regulation’s biggest headache.

In late November, following a 17-month investigation, Prosecutor General Ina Rama indicted Foreign Minister Lulzim Basha on charges that he abused his office in connection with the tender with respect to the highway. Prosecutors say the deal with American-Turkish consortium Bechtel-Enka to build the most challenging portion of the passage, 61 kilometers from Rreshen to Kalimash, has cost the abiding habitation hundreds of millions of euros.

Albania’s Supreme Court accepted the case, rejecting arguments by Basha’sitting lawyers and the body of executive officers that the prosecution is unconstitutional.

Rama was voted in by the current parliamentary majority after her predecessor was fired as being a poor showing in provision towards organized crime, but her corruption probes into senior officials have put off many of her onetime backers, including Berisha. The government has lashed back with a campaign many of its critics, including more U.S. and European Union officials, call unconstitutional.

Albania’s Transparency International ranking as the most numerous corrupt state in the Balkans notwithstanding, the abiding habitation’s highest officials have up till now remained formally uninjured. Basha is the first sitting minister to be indicted since Albania emerged from communist persuade in 1991.

The charges stem from his tenure as transport minister from 2005 to 2007. Prosecutors vindicate that Basha and his then-chief legal aide, Andi Toma, illegally favored Bechtel-Enka. They allege the minister allowed construction to begin before there was a perfected blueprint for the work and, in breach of Albanian law and regulations for public tenders, accepted a much higher price by means of work one than was charged on this account that similar projects.

The price tag for the Bechtel-Enka be in action, which covers a little more than a third of the highway’s full length, has leaped from 416 million euros in the initial contract to more than 1 billion euros, according to prosecution filings. Prosecution experts and the pass supreme auditing office say the Transport Ministry’s actions require to be paid Albanian taxpayers 114 very great number euros—232 million euros if the costs are calculated in comparison with sections of the road being built by the agency of means of other companies.

In 2006 and 2007 Bechtel-Enka registered a profit of more than 44 percent on the project, netting 67 million euros on work orders of 151 very great number euros.

Basha and Toma have denied any wrongdoing. Basha contends the charges against him were fabricated by the agency of opposition Socialist leader Edi Rama (no story to the chief prosecutor) and opponents of the public road out to sabotage the project. In a recent press conference he accused repugnance members of working on Serbia’s behalf to bustle the road link with Kosovo.

Original text: http://rss.businessweek.com/~r/bw_rss/europeindex/~3/492500942/gb20081222_022306.htm