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Abuses with tenders, worth hundreds of millions of euros and request for arrest/ SPAK requests Balluk's immunity in the Parliament
2025-12-16 16:59:17 / POLITIKË
The Special Prosecution Office sent a request to the Albanian Parliament on Tuesday to allow the arrest of Deputy Prime Minister Belinda Balluku, on charges of manipulating a series of tenders for the New Ring Road worth tens of millions of euros.
SPAK's request comes as an escalation of the previous decision to suspend Balluk from office, which was overturned by the Constitutional Court after a confrontation with Prime Minister Edi Rama.
In addition to two previous investigations into the Llogara tunnel and a section of the Grand Ring Road, SPAK announced on Tuesday that Balluku has been placed under investigation for the criminal offense of violating the equality of tender participants for seven other procurement procedures related to the construction of the Grand Ring Road of Tirana.
The new tenders are: “Completion, reconciliation and continuation of the works Sheshi Shqiponja-River of Tirana, Lot 1 and QMT”; “Construction of the road segment Sheshi Shqiponja-Bulevardi i Ri, Lot 2”; “Construction of the road segment Sheshi Shqiponja-Bulevardi i Ri-Shkozë, Bridges over the Tirana River”; “Construction of the Outer Ring Road of Tirana, Lot 4”; “Construction of the Outer Ring Road of Tirana, Lot 5”; “Construction of the Outer Ring Road of Tirana, Lot 6”; “Construction of the Outer Ring Road of Tirana, Lot 7”. All these tenders were held at the same time in September 2021.
According to a previous BIRN analysis, out of the seven tenders for the Grand Ring Road, six were won with amounts ranging from 94.5% to 96.1% of the limit fund. Of the 48 companies that participated in the competition, 35 operators – or 73% – were disqualified. In some cases, large companies were excluded from the competition for lack of basic documentation, such as failure to submit a list of staff; in other cases for unusual technical criteria, such as the lack of a specific noise license. Other companies participated in the competition fictitiously. Experts say these are usually data from problematic tenders.
Immediately after the request to lift Balluk's immunity was made public, Prime Minister Edi Rama reacted by once again accusing the prosecution of arrests without trial, hinting that he would continue to defend his government's number 2. Through a message on the X platform, Rama said that the special prosecutor's request would not be prejudiced, but also singled out Balluk from other cases.
"We will engage with all our responsibility before the Albanians who gave us 83 mandates, and we will prepare to maintain a fair, clear and dignified stance, as the leading force of the country and of the Justice Reform," Rama wrote.
Balluku and former ARRSH leaders Evis Berberi, Gjyli, Elezi and her other subordinates were initially accused of manipulating the two tenders for the Llogara Tunnel and Lot 4 of the Tirana Outer Ring Road, with a total value of 210 million euros, favoring the winning companies. For this charge, the GJKKO ordered her suspension from duty on November 20 of this year.
Prime Minister Edi Rama publicly and legally opposed the decision, asking the Constitutional Court to suspend the effects of the decision until the conclusion of the trial of this request and the interpretation of the constitutional article that provides that “a member of the Council of Ministers, enjoying the immunity of a deputy, benefits from all procedural guarantees recognized not only by the Constitution, but also by criminal procedural legislation”. The Constitutional Court ordered the suspension of the GJKKO decision and announced that it would decide on the merits in January. /BIRN
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