Opinion: Can a Kosovo-Serbia Deal Cheer up the Balkans? November 10 - 24, 2011 Issue No. 75 www.prishtinainsight.com Price € 1 NEWS Police Kosovo’s “Secret Lobbyists” Beating > page 3 NEWS Complaints Arrests Following Pile Up Gun-Toting Video Police in Gjakova routine- ly beat up suspects to extract confessions, vic- > page 5 tims have told Prishtina Insight – but while this BUSINESS practice is illegal, no Central Bank Buys action has been taken. Cars From Alleged See Page 5 Fraudster > page 6 - 7 NEIGHBOURHOOD Kosovo Accused of Fixing Serbian Privatisation: Criminals Still Cashing In Key Highway Contract > page 8 - 9 Construction of Kosovo’s new highway to Albania was left unsupervised for more thana year and a half as the Transport NEWS Ministry attempted to rig the tender process to ensure its favoured candidate won, a failed bidder has alleged. Kosovo Struggles in confusing circumstances. weekend. Ministry of Infrastructure com- By Petrit Collaku The process has also led to two The supervisors were to be plained that cancellation of the with Spike in Drug official complaints, the interven- brought in to ensure that the first tender, which was under Addiction ne the world’s largest con- tion of the then Minister of construction was being carried review at the time due to an sultancy groups has Infrastructure Fatmir Limaj to out to the initial design and that appeal, would lead to “enormous Olaunched a blistering attack stop a contract being signed and materials being used were labo- losses” to the country. on Kosovo’s Ministry of one High Court hearing between ratory tested. As a result, Kosovo’s procure- Infrastructure, accusing it of warring state institutions. The ministry said it had carried ment review board, OShP, allowed “manipulating” the contract to As a result of the rows, there out the tests while waiting for the the deal to go ahead, only for the supervise work on the country’s was no supervision of work on the international experts to be then Minister of Infrastructure, biggest infrastructure project – the Albania highway until September, appointed. Fatmir Limaj, to put the process on > page 12 1 billion euro highway to Albania. almost a year-and-a-half after con- According to the tender dossier, hold again, ensuing a lengthy bat- Chris Germanacos, European struction began. Even then there a key element of the supervision tle between the two institutions. Director for Louis Berger, charges still wasn’t a full-time project contract is ensuring that taxpayers Louis Berger’s claims that the the Ministry of Transport with leader. get “value for money” and that whole process was slanted in Hill fixing the tender to favour a rival The first 40km section of the so- costs do not escalate, as they did on International’s favour appear in a Kosovo’s only English-language company, Hill International. called Patriotic Highway, built by the Albanian side of the highway, letter obtained by Prishtina Insight, newspaper is available: The lengthy process to appoint a Bechtel-Enka, running from the also constructed by Bechtel-Enka. which was lodged at OShP in June. supervisor has involved two ten- Albanian border to Qafa e Duhles, Last September, a year before Delivered to ders, one of which was cancelled near Suhareke, is due to open this the supervision work started, the continues page 2 Your Door ‘Life in Kosovo’ Faces Ban on Kosovo Tax Dodgers Flourish in From Newsstands State TV Corridors of Power across Kosovo Kosovo’s most watched current affairs An investigation by Prishtina Insight Sent To show could be taken off the national televi- has uncovered proof of what many Your Inbox sion station, RTK, under a new law being Kosovars have long believed – that their pushed by the leading party. assembly is full of tax-dodgers. The Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, Kosovo’s lawmakers, we can reveal, From led by Hashim Thaci, wants changes made appear relaxed about breaking the law our partners to the draft law on RTK, currently before when it comes to protecting the country’s news parliament, banning... page 5 business tax revenues... page 6-7 see page 16 for more info is supported by: 2 November 11 - 24, 2011 news Kosovo Accused of Fixing Key Highway Contract from page 1 ments and was backed by the OShP. The firm was then engaged in It ordered the Ministry to sign the an unsuccessful attempt to over- deal or face a fine in February 2011. turn the contract award. The move The ministry appeared to ignore by Paris-based Louis Berger SAS, this warning and was fined 20,000 which is part of Berger Group euro by OShP. Holdings, the third largest private The ministry still cancelled the sector partner to USAID, failed. tender with Merlino on March 12, Two procurement experts urged ensuring that a new process would cancellation of the tender, but the have to start. The ministry then OShP board decided against this, lodged an indictment in the High Kosovo’s government plans to open the first 38 km of the highway on 12 November. citing the “national interest”. It Court against OShP regarding the said the costs to the country would fine and the order to sign the con- The average lab price offer for the public interest can [also] be to supervise the project without a be far greater if a supervisor was tract with Merlino. the three other bidders was 3,800 taken into account.” permanent project manager, job not secured. The High Court rejected the min- euro, whereas Hill International Another procurement expert, adverts seen by Prishtina Insight istry’s indictment in May. Krasniqi put in a figure of just 747 euro per who asked not to be named, said the indicate. Tender number one: told the court that he had “wanted test. lab test issue should have been Hill International launched an to sign the contract” with Merlino The first attempt to secure a Louis Berger said this price was “sufficient reason to cancel the ten- international campaign to find a but had been told not to by the supervisor for the highway project so low it should have led to the can- der, and indeed has been the most team leader only as it began work Minister. was launched in spring 2010, as cellation of the process because at contentious point”. on the highway. It is not clear “All the responsibility about construction of the highway got that price it would be an “unper- However, the expert conceded whether one is now in place as nei- underway. these investigations has been taken formable tender”. that “it is still good that supervi- ther Hill International nor the In August that year, an Italian by the minister [Limaj] himself Germanacos said it raised ques- sion of the highway has started”. Ministry of Transport has clarified and not me as a public procure- firm, Merlino-Progetti & tions about “Hill International’s Counting the costs: the point. Politecnica, was selected after put- ment manager,” he said, according manipulative strategy and poten- Yet, the post of project manager ting in a bid for just under 7 million to the official summary of the pro- tial collaboration with regard to The Albanian government is a key one, and the experience euro. Hill International had also ceedings. taking advantage of an unfair prac- brought in Bechtel-Enka to build a and qualifications of the candidate bid. The second round: tice employed by MI [the ministry] key section of its Patriotic was one of the main areas evaluat- Louis Berger appealed against to the disadvantage of other opera- Highway in 2006, running from the ed during the tender process. It the award, claiming it had been A second bidding process mean- tors”. port of Durres to the Kosovo bor- would have contributed to Hill unfairly disqualified. OShP reject- while started in April and in June He added that the ministry had der, at a cost of 418 million euro. International’s top score for its ed this appeal, although its pro- Hill International emerged as win- not specified the amount of lab As with the subsequent contract technical proposal. curement experts did find a num- ners with a deal worth 6.95 million testing which was to be carried out for the Kosovo section, the deal was The Ministry said Hill intended ber of irregularities in the tender euro. Merlino did not bid the sec- for each material, which made it “re-measureable” in that the price to bring in an expert called Michael process. ond time. impossible to provide accurate fig- was not fixed, and it changed as Beer, but he fell ill and the firm was The Ministry of Infrastructure, Louis Berger again complained. ures. work went on. The final bill was forced to find a replacement. then called the Ministry of In a letter to OShP, it said that both He said that had Louis Berger more than 1 billion euro. Rame Cupeva, director of infra- Transport, told the OShP that can- tenders had been biased in Hill been aware of how the ministry Concerns were raised when structure within the ministry said: celling the tender would lead to International favour. was planning to calculate the lab Kosovo entered into a similar deal “Hill International originally pro- “enormous losses”. Berger recalled that it had testing points, it would have offered in 2010, but the government batted posed Michael Beer as project man- The OShP agreed and gave the offered 5.9 million euro for the con- a price of “0 euro” for the tests, as away criticism.