Opinion: The New Year in Kosovo Jan 18 - 31, 2013 Issue No. 103 www.prishtinainsight.com Price € 1 NEWS Sparkes: Privatisation Tangle Leaves Buyer Politics Unusable Business Weigh on > page 3 NEWS EULEX Gjakova Dumps Laws In Rush for EU rule of law mission’s Trash Power former deputy chief says > page 5 successes in fighting NEWS corruption are under- Kosovo and Serbia played - but pressures to preserve Kosovo’s stabil- Militias Threaten ity have sometimes got Violence in the way. > page 6 See Page 4 FEATURE Rise of Conservative Islamists Alarms New Row Buffets Scandal-Hit Kosovars Kosovo Passport Contract Austrian company and Kosovo Ministry of Internal Affairs are locked into a tax dispute over a 14 million euro contract already rocked by allegations of theft and bribery. > page 12-13 By Jeton Musliu, Florent Spahija and back to 2011. Haziraj said the contract required November 2012 after she failed to CULTURE Kreshnik Gashi At the Austrians’ request, the the Austrian State Printing House transfer 1.4 million euro from the two sides have now suspended fur- to pay VAT on the passports it sends Interior Ministry to the Austrian Kosovo Textbooks osovo’s Interior Ministry ther talks until next week. to Kosovo. It is impossible to verify State Printing House, which had and the Austrian company The company declined to com- Haziraj’s claim because the min- hired her as a subcontractor. Soften Line on Kthat prints the country’s biometric passports are in a dis- ment, but Interior Ministry istry has not released the contract. The money from the Interior Ottoman Rule pute over taxes. spokesman Behar Haziraj told Ministry was intended as payment The contract has already been Prishtina Insight on Thursday Missing money: for the passports. > page 14 buffeted by allegations that a con- that a key issue concerns the Kosovo began issuing biometric sultant stole 1.4 million euro. recent shipment of 70,000 pass- The tax dispute between the passports that year as one of pre- Ministry officials and represen- ports from Austria to Kosovo. ministry and the Austrian compa- conditions for visa liberalization. tatives of the privately owned Haziraj said the company had ny follows separate allegations This would allow Kosovo nationals Kosovo’s only English-language Austrian State Printing House met failed to show that it had paid VAT that a subcontractor stole 1.4 mil- to travel without visas into the newspaper is available: in Prishtina this week, but failed on the passports, and so the min- lion euro from the company. EU’s passport-free Schengen area. to resolve disputes about the 14 istry had stopped paying the com- Kosovo Police arrested Natali Delivered to million euro contract, which dates pany. Velija, owner of Consulting EU, in continues page 2 Your Door From Newsstands Prishtina Insight across Kosovo Ski Guide 2013 Sent To It’s time again to dust of those ski Your Inbox clothes and head to higher alti- From tudes in search of the perfect our partners piste, or spa resort. guide page 7-9 see page 16 for more info is supported by: 2 Jan 18 - 31, 2013 news New Row Buffets Scandal-Hit Kosovo Passport Contract from page 1 documents to misappropriate about 7,400 euro. But in December 2012, Velija The Austrian Development told the Prishtina daily Koha Agency had given her NGO the Ditore that she had had to spend funds to renovate a school in the the 1.4 million euro on bribes for village of Pobergje in Decan. Interior Ministry officials. Velija denied wrongdoing and She would not specify which returned the money to the Agency, ones, however. according to court records. The Ministry announced the However, the case remains active contract in June 2011. That month and is due to go to trial at some Velija was charged with embezzle- point. ment relating to a separate issue. In this earlier case, police and Earlier case: prosecutors accused Velija, as director of the Dielli i Kosoves, or The fact that the earlier case Kosovo Sun, an NGO, of forging was not closed raises questions about how Velija came to be involved in the passport contract. Under Kosovo’s 2011 Law on Public Procurement, no one con- victed of fraud may obtain public tenders. In practice, those charged with, or being investigated on suspicion Natali Velija is at the centre of the case. of fraud, are also frequently dis- qualified from tenders. Kosovo Police began investigat- awarded to another company, and said the flooring simply fell The law is less clear about ing the school contract in early Iliria, whose owner has since testi- behind schedule. whether these conditions apply to 2011. fied that, after he received the She noted that she had returned subcontractors. After Dielli i Kosoves had funds for the work, Gega wrote to the funds. “I haven’t misappropri- Haziraj, the Interior Ministry agreed to renovate a school at the him saying that the flooring was ated any funds,” she said. She also spokesman, told Prishtina Insight request of the Decan municipality, no longer needed and he needed denied wrongdoing over the ten- recently that checking up on the NGO secured funding from the the money for the windows and ders. Velija’s background had been the Austrian Development Agency to doors. He said he transferred the Christian Geosits, of the responsibility of the Austrian paint its walls and replace doors, money to Gega. Austrian Development Agency in company. windows and flooring. After the flooring was never Kosovo, in January confirmed that Asked if anyone in the ministry Velija and an alleged co-conspir- completed, the Austrian the organisation got its money had been aware that Velija still ator, Gezim Gega, were accused of Development Agency demanded back in September 2011. “As far as faced prosecution over the earlier forging documents to secure a ten- the return of the funds in ADA is concerned, the case is charge, Haziraj said he had not der for Gega’s company, a charge December 2010. closed,” he said. “The criminal known, as “the responsible per- that Velija and Gega have denied. In a court hearing in October case is now with the prosecution sons have been suspended”. The tender for the flooring was 2011, Velija denied embezzlement and the court.” Man Held in Desecration of Serbian Graves perpetrators to be brought to jus- tice. The UN mission in Kosovo, by Edona Peci UNMIK, said that “the destruction of graveyards in any community is contemptible”. Police have detained a man sus- UNMIK said that municipalities pected of destroying Serbian throughout Kosovo have recently Orthodox graves in Kosovo been participating in a restoration Polje/Fushe Kosove but insisted programme for Orthodox cemeter- that he wasn’t motivated by ethnic ies. hatred. “Unfortunately, such incidents Police said a 48-year-old man, seriously impede the progress named as M. Buzuku, an ethnic achieved thus far,” the UN mis- Ashkali, was arrested on Tuesday sion’s statement said. afternoon for allegedly vandalis- The acting head of the OSCE mis- ing more than 50 gravestones. sion in Kosovo, Paivi Nikander, said Police ruled out the possibility that the desecration “highlights the that ethnic or religious motives absolute lack of respect for the dead had caused him to damage the and the ethnicity they belong to”. memorials at the cemetery, saying However the head of the Kosovo that he had stolen some of the Polje municipality, Burim Berisha, stones for personal gain. stressed that the area was “multi- The suspect has been charged ethnic and secure for all communi- with larceny, the statement said. ties living there”. International organisations The Serb population of Kosovo working in Kosovo have condemned Polje has shrunk significantly the vandalism and called for the since the war in Kosovo. Y M C +381 38 602042, +377 44 243367, +386 49 243367 K news Jan 18 - 31, 2013 3 Privatisation Tangle Leaves Editor’s Word Buyer Unusable Business The Stamp of Nexhat Kastrati spent 200,000 euro on buying premises for a store in Mitrovica - but his Government Failure inability to evict the current tenant highlights the many risks of privatization in Kosovo. hether it fell apart as a result of corruption, gross incompe- June 21. That day, he set off to the November, Beqiri wrote that he tence, or a combination of both, it’s clear that the troubled con- agency’s offices to close the deal. did contact and meet Kastrati on Wtract to produce Kosovo’s biometric passports represents a He got a phone call that day from several occasions but never threat- colossal failure of government. By Kreshnik Gashi the person renting the facility, ened him to give up Ylli. Many of the facts remain murky. But in November, a woman named and Liridona Hyseni Kasim Beqiri. “He called me on “I wanted him to accept the real- Natali Velija was arrested on suspicion of stealing 1.4 million euro. the phone when the KPA was mak- ity that he’d made a mistake,” The money, at least officially, was supposed to be payment from the ing its decision and wanted to have Beqiri wrote. Ministry of Internal Affairs to the privately owned Austrian State uying Ylli sounded like a a coffee,” Kastrati recalls. Beqiri said he was just trying to Printing House for making passports. good idea to Nexhat Beqiri owns a chain of super- look after the welfare of his Velija, working as a sub-contractor for the Austrian firm, never BKastrati. The state-owned markets, called Florenti, one of employees and their families. transferred the money to her employer.