TIRANA, June 10 – Albanian prosecutors have issued an arrest warrant for a high-profile Italian businessman and ordered the seizure of his assets in Albania, which include a private TV station, Agon Channel.
Francesco Becchetti, his mother, and two associates, are accused of fraud-related offenses and money laundering over a failed hydroelectric power plant scheme that allegedly cost the government tens of millions of euros in grants and unpaid taxes.
Becchetti is not currently in Albania, and authorities have issued an international request for his arrest and the other wanted Italians. However, his Albanian associate and an Albanian employee of a private bank were arrested in Tirana, the latter for allowing the procedures on alleged money laundering.
The charges against Becchetti, 48, carry a maximum prison sentence of 15 years.
Following the issuance of the arrest warrant, Becchetti told an Italian online media in an interview that he plans to sue Albania in an international arbitration court.
“For those who think they can intimidate me, they will get the opposite results,” he told Adn Kronos news agency.
Opposition politicians and Becchetti supporters expressed concern the move would cause fear among foreign investors and could be perceived as a threat to private media critical of the government.
However, Prime Minister Edi Rama said prosecutors were targeting crime with their actions, not the media.
“Blocking the dirty money that fed Agon Channel [is] a success,” Rama said on his social media channels.
Former Prime Minister Sali Berisha said the move was initiated by Albania’s ruling parties, which have been at the center of criticism by Agon Channel.
The channel’s flagship investigative journalism program had recently uncovered how Rama’s Socialist-led coalition had planned to rig the upcoming local elections through the use of fake ID cards, Berisha said at a press conference.
Becchetti’s activities were recently the focus of attention by Italian investigative journalists at the state broadcaster RAI, which showed a shady legacy for the Italian businessman both in his native land and in Albania.
His record with the Albanian public has also been spotty. Becchetti’s plans to import trash from Italy to Albania to be burned in incinerators to create electricity were met with fierce public protests before they were canceled, for example.
Agon Channel repeatedly featured ads trying to portray the technology as safe and beneficial during its programs, made opulent by millions of euros poured into new studios and high-profile staff.
Becchetti began investments in Albania in the 1990s following the fall of communism, but a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said he no longer lives in the country as of January.
The investigation into Becchetti’s activities was launched over a major hydroelectric plant in southern Albania that was never built. Prosecutors say his companies issued artificially swollen bills of work that was never done and asked for value-added tax reimbursements on forged documents.
He got the concession to build the Kalivaç hydro power station in the first days of the Fatos Nano Socialist government and right after the anarchy of 1997. But he managed to secure support from following governments as well.
Currently, authorities said that Becchetti’s businesses owed about 770 million leks in unpaid taxes to the authorities.
Becchetti is also owner of the Leyton Orient soccer club in Britain. Becchetti bought the east London club last July as part of a television show on Agon Channel Italia, a channel that broadcasts in Italy from Albania.
Becchetti is considering selling the club, according to reports, following their relegation to England’s League Two. He purchased 90 percent of the club about a year earlier for 4 million pounds.
