The Tax Administration will verify all bank transactions of the IRTC Company, which exploited the Ballsh oil refinery for more than one year, creating a 50 million debt.
Top Channel has learned that on December 5th, the Tirana Tax Office asked commercial banks to provide information regarding transactions carried out by IRTC, to verify if the company transferred more money abroad.
Sources from the Tax administration say that since December, IRTC, administered by Mitat Sulaj, has had all of its accounts blocked. Their assets were also blocked as guarantee.
The Tax Office didn’t reveal the monetary value of the blocked assets, but sources from the administration say that after the one-month deadline, all assets will be seized as sanctioned by the law.
IRTC took the Albanian oil refinery ARMO under their administration on September 2016, based on an agreement with private creditors and with the blessing of the Albanian government, which hailed the agreement as a success.
Based on Customs data, the company has produced and sold a total of 156,000 tons of fuels in Albania. Despite the 220 million EUR earnings from oil sales, the company has created a 50 million EUR debt at the Tax Administration, mainly for VAT and Circulation Tax.
This is not the first time that ARMO is allowed to operate without paying taxes, causing huge damage to the state budget.
In 2009, when it was privatized by Rezart Taci, and later by an Azerbaijani company, ARMO has been allowed to evade hundreds of millions of Euros in tax obligations, which were never recovered, but were pardoned through amnesties or kept standing as debts.
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