One million EUR TV ad abuse

10/12/2013 00:00

The majority says that there is no surprise in the reporting of the
former Minister of Defense, Arben Imami, and four of his dependents over
power abuse charges, misuse of public funds and violation of equality
in tenders,

From 2012 to 2013, Imami was the most accused Minister for corruptive affairs on arm trades, for using the secret service to spy the then opposition, for privatizing army assets, for tenders and also for abusing with the public funds in TV ads.

The accusations sent yesterday to Prosecution by the current Minister of Defense, Mimi Kodheli, started when Parliament Member Erjon Brace showed for the first time on Top Channel the scandal how 1 million USD was used for advertisements.

“Everyone’s attention is on the political TV spot of the Ministry of Defense. I want to tell the Albanian people how much they paid for that: 100 million ALL, all coming from the budget of the Ministry of Defense, the Army Culture Center, on May 21st, and were then transferred to other accounts”, Brace declared on June 2012.

Brace advanced with his accusation by declaring that based on the documents that he owned, there was a deeper fact, that half of the fund had disappeared from official transactions.

“The question is where did the other half go. The money is paid full. What is the other half funding? Because the main concern is that it is financing another political activity of the Democratic Party in a clean scheme of bribes, within the administration and political family of Sali Berisha”, Brace declared back then.

This report of Erjon Brace continued with another wave of reports by Parliament Member Eduard Shalsi, who listed all the funds used by the Berisha government for the TV ads, mounting to a total of 13 million EUR.

“In 2007, the Ministry of Defense spent 235.000 USD. 115.000 in 2008. 385.000 in 2009. 30.000 in 2010. 700.000 in 2011, and the same figure is seen in 2012”, Shalsi declared.

According to the document published by Shalsi, the Ministry of defense at given the entire fund to only one company. 3 million USD were given in three years. Only through Repart 606, the company that produced and distributed the ads, the government has paid 300.000 USD. The company has paid on behalf of this Ministry 76.000 to Top Channel, ir 2.6% of this fund.

For all reports made by the Socialist Parliament Members, the Socialist Party, then in opposition, presented the initiative of creating a commission for all corruptive affairs articulated against Imami. This initiative was rejected by the majority.

Top Channel