TIRANA, Sept. 21 – Prosecutors in Tirana have launched an investigation about alleged irregularities in a tender of police uniforms.
The Lek 1.3 billion tender was held last year and the contract was awarded to a consortium of “Marsi Al” and “Yakupoglu Tekstil” companies. The probe kicked off after prosecutors investigated several private companies suspected to have manipulated tax records.
The documents revealed that one of the companies claimed to have purchased 27,900 uniforms from Turkey, whilst records from Customs Office show that there is no entry and declaration of such kind.
Prosecutors suspect that the uniforms have been produced in the country with a cheaper cost and quality than the one mentioned in the tender procedures. Prosecutors also seized some samples of the existing uniforms to compare them to the materials presented in the tender applications.
However, to do that, prosecutors need the assistance of scientific police to do the testing due to a conflict of interest.
The analysis of the samples is crucial for the investigation which is expected to reveal if companies have committed an economic crime.
Last year, the opposition parties slammed the tender, accusing the Ministry of Interior Affairs of favoring the winning companies and applying technical criteria that were not transparent. This is not the first time that tenders like this spark concerns of corruption.
In 2013, a similar tender on state police uniforms was deemed as corruptive and it implicated former Prime Minister Sali Berisha, former Minister of Interior of Affairs Bujar Nishani and Chief of Police.
According to the investigation which was not conclusive, the damages to the state budget amounted to 1.8 billion Lek.
