Government TV ads scandal

The expenses that can be considered a luxury for a Ministry that has no money to provide gas for the Police vehicles were made public by Socialist MP Eduart Shalsi.

“The economic crisis has swept all Albania, as it can be clearly seen by the reduction of the buying power, the price increase and the inability of the Albanians to make the ends meet. All this in the difficult conditions of the businesses, who are unable to pay the loans taken by banks on one hand, and disoriented by the government’s pressure that blackmails them with fines and penalties on the other”, Shalsi declared.

“Exactly in this difficult situation, when every responsible government would reduce futile expenses, Berisha’s government not only will not take any measure, but on the contrary, will increase the expenses for promoting itself. Today we are publishing the public expenses for the advertisements of some Ministries, so that the Albanians can see how their money is spent and where the tax payers money go, so that they can know how their money are abused with. The Interior Ministry, which spent 7500 USD in 2006, 100.000 USD in 2007, 219.000 USD in 2008, 765.000 in 2009, 1.93 million USD in 2010 and 1 million USD in 2011. In 2012, only for the first five months they have spent 714.000 USD”, Shalsi declared.

Besides the figures secured by official documents, Shalsi showed the names of the companies that have benefited.

“As you see, the figures are clear for the money that the Interior Ministry has used for promotion. There is only one company that manages most of this money, Promo LLC, as it is shown by these documents. Dozens, hundreds and millions of EUR are used for advertisements, and the police officers are still working with low wages and difficult conditions. In fact, they have not for their extra hours. There has been a gas shortage for their vehicles, and significant absences in logistics. This is the real face of the government of Sali Berisha, which the Albanians do know, but we will make it even clearer each day”, Shalsi declared.

Shalsi is expected to report a series of transactions that some Ministries have used for advertisements that have been unequally distributed in the media market, by favoring only the TVs close to the government.

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