TIRANA, Mar. 25 – Head of the opposition’s Democratic Party Lulzim Basha appeared on Monday in front of Tirana’s prosecution over the DP’s lobbying contracts in the US before and during the 2017 parliamentary election campaign.
“This investigation began a year and a half ago, the answers arrived from the US and the UK six months ago. They prove that neither the DP, nor the DP’s leaders have broke any laws in Albania, the UK or the US. I call for the prosecution to make those answers public,” Basha said.
The prosecution began verifying PD lobbying contracts with several US companies in November 2017 to clarify funding sources for these contracts and to see if the transactions were legal.
The one-year open investigation is done on the basis of filling in the Central Election Committee forms. The issue being investigated at the request of the DP is whether these are filled or not properly. This is the investigation, not lies and defamations on which the government that fueled this investigation is strongly invested, whenever they meet its political needs” Basha, who emphasized that he was summoned by the prosecution as a person who could have been aware of the circumstances of the investigation.
The issue of lobbying payments made by the DP opened in November 2017, when American lobbying firm ‘Muzin Capitol Partners’ supplemented with additional information its legally binding declarations for the Department of Justice.
According to ‘Muzin’ statements, the entity has received three payments in the amount of $675,000 for its work in favor of the Democratic Party in 2017: the first payment on March 24, 2017 and is made by the firm “Biniatta Trade LP “, worth $150,000, the other two payments were made by the Democratic Party, one on March 27, for $25,000 , and the other on June 9 for $500,000.
Basha said the DP has only made a payment of $25,000, leaving the other two payments or they sources unclear.
The Democratic Party has also denied any connection with the “Biniatta Trade LP” firm, which is registered in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is owned by a chain of companies registered in Belize – a Central American state, known as a fiscal haven.
According to a Mother Jones magazine investigation, “Biniatta Trade LP” is a partnership created by two companies: Asverro Corp and Liminez Commerce, for which “there is no public information for any commercial activity”.
Behind these two companies, according to Mother Jones, there are two other registered companies in the United Kingdom, “Babyonica” and “KF Global Management”, whose shares are owned 75 percent by two Russian citizens, Evgeny Sheremetyev and Kostantin Ferulev.
Another investigative material, published by Top Channel, regarding the investigations in Scotland, states that the real owners behind Biniatta Trade LP are two Russian nationals, Victoria Valkovskaya and Natasha Radysheva, the first living in the Seychelles Islands , a country known as “fiscal haven” for offshore companies, while Radysheva in Belize.
When the debate on lobbying funds broke out last year, with the publication of Mother Jones articles, the DP publicly stated that “it has not broken any law, neither Albanian, nor American nor any other country. The Democratic Party has not had and has no direct or indirect links with Russian individuals or companies.”
Meanwhile, the “Muzin Capitol Partners” stated it is “compensated by ‘Biniatta Trade LP’ for activities organized on behalf of the Democratic Party to promote the Albanian conservative leadership among businessmen and political leaders in the United States.”
What the lobbyist has done and how he’s done it, is business. These are relations of Muzin with third parties,” said Mr. Basha last March, giving the same reasoning for the of $500,000 amount which in the documents Muzin said was paid by the DP.
But while DP has admitted paying only $ 25,000 on its part, the company Muzin Capitol Partners has stated that its expenses for subcontractors engaged in activities in favor of the Albanian party only go over 100 thousand dollars.
