TIRANA, June 26 – The court process on the former heads of the CEZ electricity distribution company Josef Haisek and Jan Ivan, who are both accused of fraud in Albania, restarted on Tuesday.
During the process, the two Czech citizens’ defense lawyer Arben Rakipi asked the court to announce some contability expertise documents which calculated that the fraud damage mounted to five million euros as invalid, because they were done without the two defendants’ knowledge.
According to the lawyer, the Czech citizens have the right to ask and contest the case experts.
The same prosecution witnesses that spoke against the former DIA administrator Kastriot Ismailaj, now also testified against Haisen and Ivan.
Ismailaj, former head of DIA Shpk, was found guilty of deception and money laundering back in October 2017, for charges tied to a contract signed between DIA and CEZ, the electricity distribution company.
DIA would be in charge of collecting overdue bills from citizens, undertaking an abuse that cost the Albanian government and CEZ more than four million euros in losses.
The contract between CEZ and DIA took place under the former coalition government of the Democratic Party, then led by Sali Berisha, and Meta’s Socialist Movement for Integration, before he became the country’s president.
CEZ managed the Albanian distribution operator for three and a half years until it had its Albania licence revoked in January 2013 under the former Democratic Party-led government after an apparent bankruptcy.
