Agriculture tender scandal: 5 accused remain in prison, sentence commuted for 5 others

Nga A2 CNN
2025-02-26 19:45:00 | Kronikë

Agriculture tender scandal: 5 accused remain in prison, sentence commuted for 5

After a session that lasted several hours, the Special Anti-Corruption Court has announced the charges against 24 people involved in the tender scandal at the Kamza Agricultural University.

The GJKKO left unchanged the measure of "prison arrest" for Edmond Tërthorjan, administrator of the University, Altin Murto, director of public funds, Amarildo Lleshi, director of public procurement, and Mehmet Qoshja, specialist for funds, who are suspected of having committed the criminal offense of "Violation of equality of participants in public tenders or auctions" in collaboration with each other.

The same measure has been confirmed for Pirro Zogu, the head of a private entity suspected of the crime of "Forgery of documents".

Meanwhile, the Court has eased the security measure from house arrest to mandatory reporting for 5 other suspects, while for the rest the measures remain unchanged.

Through investigations using special methods such as; wiretapping of telephone conversations of officials of the Agricultural University of Tirana, observations conducted by the State Police and documentation management, nine procurement procedures conducted in 2022, with a procurement value of 90,000,000 lek, have been investigated.

During the investigation, legal violations were identified by responsible academic personnel at UBT, citizens; Ilir Kapaj and Romina Koto, vice-rectors at the Agricultural University of Tirana and head of the Department of Preclinical Modules at UBT, who, at the time of designing projects and securing funds from the National Agency for Scientific Research and Innovation, carried out actions in collaboration with the head of the contracting authority, Edmond Tërthorja, Administrator of UBT.

Their illegal actions consisted of preparing fictitious project data, with specifications prepared by the competing and winning economic operators themselves in these procurement procedures.

The investigations also show that violations occurred even after the funds were secured by AKKSHI. Cases of the development of a procurement procedure with a predetermined economic operator for equipment and other goods, which were made available to the contracting authority, were also identified, several months before the announcement of the procurement procedures. (A2 Televizion)

A2 CNN Livestream

Live Updates

Latest Videos