TIRANA, Oct. 22 – Prime Minister Edi Rama dismissed this week attacks by the opposition on how Rama’s administration handled a deal with the Czech power company, CEZ, which for several years managed Albania’s power distribution company.
Rama said this week — at an event to mark a year since the start of a campaign against power theft and losses — that it was under the former Democratic Party administration of then Prime Minister Sali Berisha that CEZ was brought in to privatize the power distribution company, which according to Rama was “a big mistake.”
He added that not striking a deal with CEZ to leave the country would have cost Albania millions.
Rama has said he would seek the help of international experts to do any investigation, adding the deal with CEZ was reached “not in backrooms” or in secret but through the support of international experts and “negotiated in the offices of the Energy Community in Vienna, with the participation of 15 people from the Albanian side and each session recorded.”
But the Democratic Party’s leader, Lulzim Basha, says that deal cost Albanian state coffers EUR600 million, and he has called for an investigation into the amicable out-of-court settlement with the Czech-owned company.
“An investigation of the largest scheme of corruption and the CEZ scandal is the cornerstone for the stability of the country and its future,” Basha said this week. “Rama can not continue to rule the country, when he plundered EUR600 million.”
Basha accused the government of “intentionally delaying” an investigation into the matter.
The political debate comes after the Supreme State Audit filed charges against officials involved in the deal for costing the state budget EUR479 million in damages.
The government said the charges were baseless and politically motivated.
Rama said this week that unless his government had reached a deal with CEZ, which was expelled from Albania at the end of the rule of the Democratic Party government, Tirana could have lost millions more at an international arbitration court where the Prague-based company has sued for compensation after the botched privatization.
