Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)-based engineering giant Energoinvest, which has built an electricity grid between Albania and Kosovo, has paid millions of euros to a small consulting firm based in the United Arab Emirates headed by an Albanian businessman with political connections, according to documents obtained by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) who investigated this story.
According to them, in January this year, during heavy snowfall in the mountainous areas of northern Albania, strong winds and ice knocked down electric poles and disrupted the transmission of electricity via a 400-kilovolt line connecting dams on the Drim River in Albania with neighboring Kosovo.
That transmission line only started operating last December. Due to extreme weather conditions and inaccessible terrain, works on repairing the network had to wait until February, and the line was repaired by May.
Funded through a loan from Germany’s state-owned KfW Development Bank, a public procurement procedure for the Albanian section of the transmission line was launched in 2011.
Marked by allegations of corruption, the process was postponed until April 2014, when Albania’s Transmission System Operator (OST) signed a 29 million euro contract with BiH’s engineering company Energoinvest to build an Albanian section, which was finished in mid-2016.
The new transmission line has been celebrated in both Albania and Kosovo as a turning point in the energy sector.
“Regarding information and connecting Energoinvest to business with” offshore “companies, what we can confirm at thismoment is that Energoinvest does not have any own” offshore “companies or” offshore “accounts anywhere in the world.
Energoinvest has accounts in the countries where it operates andeach of them is registered through the competent Ministries and for which approval has been obtained for the collection and holding of funds.
To recall, “Pandora Papers” show numerous suspicious transactions of world powers, but they also reveal details for the Balkans area, and the latest published documents concern company from BiH, Energoinvest.
