A few hours after the bids for the Albpetrol tender were opened with a
surprise bid, the first suspicions and questions are coming to light.
The consortium of “Vetro” and “Silk Road Equity” that offered the highest bid of 850 million EUR, at least according to the public data, has no experience in the energy area, as a main criteria for the Albpetrol buyer.
Silk Road is an American investment fund from Chicago, while Vetro is a company from Singapore about which there is not much public information.
But the suspicions related with the strategic criteria are not the only ones. Other facts shed strong suspicions on this privatization attempt.
This consortium was officially represented in this tender by Essad Puskar, a Bosnian-American very well known in Albania, especially in Kosovo.
Puskar is a controversial character, the man that was in the center of the scandal that followed Behxhet Pacolli’s presidential election on February 22nd.
This individual served as an intermediate in the SMS communication between the US ambassador in Prishtina, Chris Dell, and Mr. Pacolli himself.
The Self-Determination movement has called him the “Damir Fazlic” of Kosovo, and the latter maybe not by chance was today in Tirana, with voicing saying that he would lobby for another company in the tender.
It seems that the battle between controversial intermediates was won by the new Bosnian, but Puskar’s connections are not strong only in Kosovo.
A simple internet search discovers that Puskar has worked as adviser of an Albanian controversial oil businessman, Rezart Taci.
They are both related through a history in Aserbaijan. While Taci was recently facing problems with the National Azeri Bank for a 75 million EUR debt for the purchase of Armo, Puskar was very active in Baku recently by meeting high rank officials and by promising new investment openings in Europe.
This connection is bringing to the attention of the public a similar scenario a few years ago, when the Albanian government privatized Armo. Even in that time was said that the buyer was a US company from Texas, but later it came out that the buyer was Rezart Taci.
The Americans never came in Albania and their name was never mentioned. Puskar’s involvement in the Albpetrol tender adds even more suspicions to the name that stand behind the offer for the purchase of Albpetrol.
Where do the money come from and who might be the real owner of Albpetrol, the Americans of the consortium or the Azeri of Sokar?
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