A walks near by coal-fired power plant ‘Kosova B’ in the town of Obilic, Kosovo,October 18, 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/VALDRIN XHEMAJ Corruption Suspicions About Energy Corporation’s Director Cause Turmoil in KosovoXhorxhina Bami and Egzon DahsylaPristinaBIRNMay 1, 202308:28 Xhorxhina Bami and Egzon DahsylaPristinaBIRNMay 1, 202308:28The arrest of the former director of the Kosovo Energy Corporation, KEK, has sparked a verbal war between the opposition and ruling parties – while a coal power plant remains unfixed and KEK’s employees are waiting for pay rises.
Employees of the Kosovo Energy Corporation, KEK, protested on Friday demanding a pay and meal allowance increase, claiming the management is ignoring the workers who risk their lives almost daily to provide electricity throughout the country.
Selatin Sadiku, from the Union of Independent Trade Unions in Kosovo, said on Friday that 12 KEK employees had died this year alone. Referring to the arrest of KEK director Nagip Krasniqi on suspicion of corruption, Sadiku claimed, ironically, that Krasniqi had “managed to unite all the employees of the union,” adding that KEK employees were “not only lied to but robbed”.
Claiming that KEK has a higher budget than Kosovo as a whole, Sadiku said that it was shameful that “our money remains in the cash registers while the management is being investigated and imprisoned”.
Krasniqi’s arrest on April 19 has caused turmoil in Kosovo’s politics. Opposition parties have hailed it as proof of government abuse of the energy sector and government MPs have called it an act of “revenge”.
He was arrested on suspicion of misuse of his position or official authority, exercise of influence and conflict of interest.
“We are here today because we requested a salary increase one year ago,” the head of the workers’ union in KEK, Nexhat Llumnica, said on Friday, claiming that they were promised an increase in the daily meal allowance, currently only 1.75 euros, in September last year by Krasniqi himself.
“On December 22, he [Krasniqi] said: ‘We cannot [pay it] now because there could be a delay in the salaries so we will pay in January.’ Once again we trusted him, but it did not come about. Employees of KEK have a heavy job but light food,” Llumnica claimed.
She added that a salary rise is also deserved because they have managed to produce so much power that only 10 per cent of Kosovo’s electricity is imported. “We managed to bring light to Kosovo; the employees are those who achieved this but the management is ignoring the employees,” Llumnica said.
The arrest of the director, Krasniqi, has affected the current situation of KEK even further. Protesters called “Thieves out!” on Friday. Meanwhile Krasniqi, who was suspended as director by the KEK board on April 25, remains in custody.
Friends accused of getting tenders
Kosovo Energy Corporation employees protest for increase of salaries and meal allowance. Photo: BIRN/Shkodrane Dakaj
Krasniqi was arrested on suspicion of misuse of his position or official authority, exercise of influence and conflict of interest, mainly regarding tenders worth around 70 million euros.
One of the suspicions is related to contracts for the repair of the boiler of the A5 block of the Kosovo A coal power plant.
On June 13, 2022, KEK opened a tender for the repair of the turbine and boiler of block A5 for 6 million euros.
Krasniqi told BIRN’s TV show Kallxo Pernime that he had requested for the entire repair to be part of one tender in order to avoid problems; in 2021 the boiler had been repaired in three months but the turbine’s repair had been delayed.
“One company did its job, but the other didn’t,” Krasniqi had claimed, saying that prolonging repair work is costly. Nonetheless, the June 2022 tender had not been successful. It was closed on July 11, 2022, due to a lack of offers.
Another tender was opened, but this time KEK invited 19 companies to submit offers, and it was divided into two parts, one for the repair of the turbine and the second for the repair of the block A5 boiler.
On November 21, 2022, the second part of the tender was canceled. KEK claimed that the company said it was unable to perform the contract within the specified period, so only the first part – repair of the turbine – had been offered, to a North Macedonia-based company, Monting Energetike Doo. The contract for 5.136 million euros was signed on December 5, 2022.
In January 2023, KEK opened a third tender, this time only for the repair of the boiler of the A5 block, for 3.6 million euros. The procedures closed without publication of a contract. The job was granted to the consortium Litwin SA for 3.4 million euros for the “emergency capital repair of the boiler of block A5”. That contract is now part of the prosecution’s file against Krasniqi.
Part of the Litwin SA consortium is the Kosovo-based company Limi-Plast, whose owner is Bujar Shala, the brother of Naser Shala, former director of the Kosovo Property Comparison and Verification Agency, KPCVA, also known as Commander “Ftyra” (Face).
Bujar Shala told BIRN that this was the first contract of this kind his company had with a public institution, explaining that his company became part of the consortium “to fulfill legal obligations”. Shala also said that, “it does not matter whose brother I am”.
According to Naser Shala’s 2021 assets’ declaration, he was co-owner of Limi-Plast with his brother until 2006. Shala resigned from w director of the KPCVA in February 2022, on the grounds that Kosovo’s parliament did not approve its 2022 work report.
Commander “Ftyra” returned to public sight in 2019, when the Kosovo parliament elected him director of the KPCVA even though British embassy monitors had assessed that he was not appropriate for the post.
BIRN reported in January 2022 that several Kosovo families fear they will lose their homes after the agency sent them eviction notices, claiming they did not buy their properties from the rightful owner.
In addition to a tender being granted to a company owned by the brother of an influential figure in Kosovo, another tender that Krasniqi is being investigated over was granted to the law company Rexhepi Zeqiri Zejna. One of the three shareholders of this company, lawyer Isuf Zejna, was Krasniqi’s personal lawyer.
Zejna told BIRN that he had “accompanied Krasniqi on two occasions to the police regarding his interview as a witness,” adding that his company offered pro-bono legal advice to Krasniqi and the management of KEK for over a year.
“It is worth saying that we’ve offered such pro bono services to several public institutions, and to individuals, and NGOs in the past,” Zejna said.
Parties split over energy corporation head’s arrest
Nagip Krasniqi, Executive director of the Kosovo Energy Corporation, KEK. Photo: from the archives of BIRN
Less than one week after the Basic Court of Pristina ordered 30 days’ custody for Krasniqi, parliament held an extraordinary session on April 26.
The MP and chair of the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, Memli Krasniqi, accused PM Albin Kurti and the ruling Vetevendosje party of protecting “his [Kurti’s] friend and fellow party member, the now famous Nagip Krasniqi, who then starts attacking and blackmailing the entire justice system”.
MP Krasniqi was referring to Nagip Krasniqi being the former head of the Committee for Energy in the Vetevendosje Movement.
Nagip Krasniqi was also elected director of KEK in October 2021 by a temporary board, appointed by the Kurti-led government at the time, without a public competition. However, he also received the highest points from the British embassy monitors in Kosovo.
Kurti himself did not attend the parliamentary session, but showed support to Krasniqi on April 20, one day after his arrest.
“There have been many chiefs in KEK in the past, there have been staggering abuses, but they have never been dealt with by the justice system, namely by the Prosecutor’s Office,” Kurti said.
He added that “the new leadership of the KEK has deposited dozens of facts and material evidence for the abuses it found there, but the prosecution’s will to deal with the deposition of facts and evidence for previous abuses has been zero.”
Kurti had claimed that Krasniqi and KEK had brought in an extra 107 million euros in revenues.
Kosovo’s Prosecutorial Council on April 20 meanwhile accused “some senior state officials” of “ trying to systematically influence the affairs of the prosecutorial system and are conveying tendentious political messages … using derogatory language against the … candidate for Chief State Prosecutor, Blerim Isufaj, which is against all ethical, legal and constitutional norms”.
Kurti, and ruling party Vetevendosje MPs, claim the KEK chief’s arrest was revenge by Acting Chief State Prosecutor Blerim Isufaj, who does not have the support of Kurti and of his political allies, President Vjosa Osmani, and Parliament Speaker Glauk Konjufca to become Chief State Prosecutor. Isufaj was voted in as Chief Prosecutor in April 2022 but his file is still awaiting the President’s decree.
The head of Vetevendosje’s parliamentary group, Mimoza Kusari-Lila, told the parliamentary session on April 26 that “the opposition is trying to use a mechanism in which they still have influence, that of the prosecution, to turn the Assembly hall into a courtroom”.
The PDK said it will send 30 KEK contracts to the Prosecutor’s Office for investigation, claiming more than 70 million euros have been abused.
An MP and chairman of another opposition party, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, AAK, Ramush Haradinaj, accused the ruling Vetevendosje party and its leader, Kurti, of corruption.
“Kurti is the boss of the corrupt, the creator of the … ‘buddy’ model. He believes that only his buddies are uncorrupted, and if the prosecutor is not a buddy, he is corrupted,” he told parliament.
In the midst of all the turmoil, block A5 of the Kosovo A coal power plant is still not functional.
Meanwhile, a vetting procedure in the justice system, has been initiated by government. However, since early March 2023, it has been sent to the Constitutional Court for comments by Speaker Konjufca.
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