Chrome, a history of abuses

In 2001, the Socialist government of the time approved the first concession of the Bulqize Mine, together with some other objects that were included in the chrome enrichment factory.  

The concession was given to an Italian company, DARFO. The Italians exploited for more than five years the reserves and stocks that were accumulated through the years, without making any investment. By the end of 2006, DARFO left and sold the concession to the Russian-Austrian group ACR.

The sale was supervised by then Minister of Economy, Genc Ruli, the man who negotiated the new concession agreement. According to the concession that was voted in the Parliament in 2007, ACR was obliged to invest 22 million EUR by the end of 2010, for renewing the technology and for improving safety conditions.

The new concession brought new hopes that the problems with the mine would end once and for all, and that the new investors would improve safety conditions and the mine efficiency. But history repeated itself. Lured by the high chrome prices during 2007 and 2008, the Company started the massive exploitation of the reserves that had been accumulated during the communist years, while they delayed the investments. Meanwhile, the miners were losing their lives, one after another, due to the lack of investments.

After exploiting it for three years, ACR had violated all investment plans as agreed in the contract. For this reason, on July 7th 2009, the company asked the Ministry of Energy to change the concession agreement. Only two days after, the former Minister Genc Ruli signed the amendment of the agreement, by postponing more than 13 million EUR of investments to the year 2013, when these investments should have already been completed.

Only three days before leaving his duty as Minister, Genc Ruli changed the agreement without having it passed by the Parliament, in full violation with the law.

After the scandal was published in Top-Channel, the Minister Ruli reacted by giving his own version of the facts, explaining that he had changed the agreement without passing it in Parliament because the MPs were in their summer-holidays. Several days after, the Prosecution started the investigations. The case still stays at the Prosecution offices, while the abuses with the mine continue.

After the elections of 2009, the Minister of Energy, Dritan Prifti tried to cancel the concession by calling the agreement officially broken.

But this initiative failed very soon. The threats and the accusations for removing the concession remained only on papers, and no legal step was taken for giving an end to the abuses with the mine.

The experts now say that the mine is risking to be destroyed, due to the exploitation without criteria and the lack of investments. This would be the tragic end of a story full of failures and corruption of hundreds of millions of dollars which involves from ordinary criminal bands to the highest rank officials of our country, persons who are abusing with one Albania’s richest treasures.

Albania is considered to be the fourth country in the world for its chrome reserves.

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