VEFA defeats the Government
As of today, the company has the right to remove the unlawful administrators
Yesterday, Vehbi Alimucaj won the case in the Constitutional Court
VEFA must be scrutinized thoroughly, despite yesterday’s Constitutional Court ruling against the state administrators. The Constitutional Court’s ruling seeks to legitimize Alimucaj’s statement, “VEFA, a state within a state,” and leave unprotected even the little that remains of the ordinary creditors’ assets.
Nevertheless, VEFA will be investigated because it must be investigated. Vehbi Alimucaj’s and VEFA’s unlawful scheme has harmed the interests of 86,000 creditors, while hundreds of millions of dollars are being held hostage or have been destroyed. According to official court records, VEFA’s bank deposits and the assets registered in its name leave debts worth 300 million dollars uncovered. Meanwhile, in an interview given to the REUTER agency in February this year, Alimucaj declared: “If I sell the properties to repay the creditors, I will have hundreds of millions of dollars left for myself. I won’t sell them because I don’t want to wander from café to café like Albanians, but I will build capitalism”!? But the cost of Alimucaj-style capitalism appears to be the bankruptcy, even to the point of suicide, of tens of thousands of Albanians, while the Constitutional Court of Berisha’s court becomes an advocate for fraud. It should not be forgotten that, after Berisha, VEFA’s sister companies were the main causes of the spring tragedies.
With yesterday’s ruling, the Constitutional Court risks blocking financial aid to Albania, even if only temporarily. The final condition for the West to release 700 million dollars in overdue loans to our country and disburse 600 million dollars in new loans is transparency regarding the borrowing companies. To the Constitutional Court, 1.3 billion dollars for 3 million Albanians is nothing compared with one man like Alimucaj. The government planned to use this money to raise wages, pensions, and social assistance payments for around 1 million people. It had planned to create jobs and reduce poverty. VEFA and its counterparts took around 2 billion dollars from Albanians, while with yesterday’s ruling the Constitutional Court seeks to prevent the Nano government from beginning even meagre compensation.
In fact, yesterday the Constitutional Court stripped the administrators of the right to co-administer the pyramid schemes’ assets. It automatically created the opportunity for the pyramid pharaohs to channel money taken from impoverished Albanians into the foreign accounts of the pyramid architects, such as Berisha, Cazidede, or Agim Shehu.
The other borrowing companies said last night that the Court’s ruling did not concern them. Meanwhile, the trio Apel–VEFA–Constitutional Court will be challenged by Parliament’s inclusion of an article in the Constitutional Package.
EMIN BARAÇI