Vlora Airport Case: Behgjet Pacolli Reportedly Among Persons Under Investigation by the Prosecution

The Tirana Prosecutor's Office has set up a special group of prosecutors to investigate the Vlora airport concession. According to Newspaper Topic, the criminal proceedings (no. 64/06) began in September and include three suspects: businessman Behgjet Pacolli, his brother Emin Pacolli and Nelson Çela, administrator of the parent company in Switzerland Mabco Construction SA.

The newspaper reports that Çela appeared at the Tirana Prosecutor's Office this morning, gave a statement and then signed his resignation as administrator of the company owned by Pacolli. The charges include fraud with serious consequences, computer fraud and forgery of documents/acts.

Full reporting:

By Habjon Hasani

The Tirana Prosecution Office has structured a group of prosecutors to investigate the Vlora airport case. The investigation has been registered for 3 individuals: the businessman Behgjet Pacolli with his brother Emin Pacolli, as well as the citizen Nelson Cela, administrator of the parent company in Switzerland Mabco Construction SA. Citizen Nelson Çela was summoned this morning to the Tirana Prosecutor's Office; he gave a deposition, and immediately afterwards signed his resignation as administrator of the company owned by Pacolli. The three of them are officially under investigation for fraud with serious consequences, computer fraud, and forgery of documents and acts.

The criminal proceedings against Mr. Pacolli and two others are numbered 64/06 and began in September, after a valuable informant was put in motion by partner intelligence services; a member of the investigative structure is believed to have received “clearance” from the FBI.

This story, seemingly a corruption clash (Balluku–Pacolli), carries an even stronger concern than corruption, as there are indications that Pacolli is making deals far away to use the Vlora airport as collateral. His actions have left their mark as far away as Astana, Kazakhstan.

The concern is that the corrupt acrobatics of Tirana officials have taken the game much further than corruption: Vlora Airport is a strategic logistical capacity in the Mediterranean, while the way Pacolli has acted has raised concerns that he may be creating a corridor for Russian strategic interests in Albania.

But let's start this story from the beginning.

One fine day, Behgjet Pacolli was accidentally photographed in the courtyard of the Prime Minister's Office. Speculation went so far that some media outlets reported that he could be Rama's candidate for ministerial positions.

In fact, not only was he not like that, but Rama "unintentionally" asked for that photograph to be taken, after a very tense conversation with Pacolli in the prime minister's office.

In this meeting, Mr. Pacolli made an unimaginable move, he declared to the Prime Minister:

"I will hold 98 percent of the airport's shares and I had no knowledge of the atrocities that my administrator Valon Lluka committed with your officials. I bought 40 percent of the shares of the Turkish company that left under contract and I have no obligations to anyone. Valon Lluka will no longer be my administrator, since he and your officials committed this corruption.", - Pacolli is said to have said to the Prime Minister of Albania, while the latter, at that very moment, realized what trouble he could be in.

The passion for painting and Sunday podcasts barely left Prime Minister Rama time to smell what had been cooking for months.

Pacolli claims that there was an affair and corrupt deal between Mrs. Balluku and his former administrator Valon Lluka, about which Mr. Pacolli says he knew nothing about, playing the card of an older, honest and somewhat naive man.

Meanwhile, his partner in the concession, "2A Group", turns out to have invested more than Pacolli, while both have taken out a loan in the amount of 56 million euros from the National Commercial Bank (BKT).

Between Pacolli's company "Mabco" and Imer Ademi's partner "2A Group" there are several notarial contracts that specifically refer to the transfer of shares, but BKT so far appears to be openly supporting Mr. Pacolli's incursion and is not carrying out the preliminary procedures that allow the registration of previous contracts at the Central Bank.

The reasons why BKT is so openly supporting Mr. Pacolli are still unknown, but it is a fact that Mr. Pacolli has committed an act that has raised very strong suspicions, not of corruption this time, but of an incursion of Russia's strategic interests in Albania.

It is a logical deduction that has set the American partners in motion.

Let us assume for a moment, for the sake of argument, that Mr. Pacolli is an elderly, honest and naive man, and that the "witch" Belinda Balluku, together with his former administrator Valon Lluka, have made deals and corruption without the knowledge of this very honest man.

In this scenario the question that arises is:

Where does Mr. Pacolli find the strength to challenge this clan presumed to be corrupt in its own territory?

If Mr. Pacolli is an ordinary businessman who sees the plight of his own affairs, as if in a naive style, how can he go to the office of the Prime Minister (who is supposedly the boss of bosses over the territory) and not aim for any negotiation or path to a solution, but go and confront the Prime Minister with the fait accompli in his own territory?

To abstract further, it is worth looking at Mr. Pacolli's profile as a businessman. It turns out that from the distant 1997 investigations of former prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, Pacolli ran a company in Switzerland with a total of 5 staff members, his office was smaller than an online portal editorial office, but on the other hand, his company "Mabetex" was invoiced for billion-dollar contracts from Kazakhstan and the Kremlin. His credit cards were also used by the daughter of Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Mr. Pacolli's business beginnings were due to his personal connection with Pavel Borodin, a key figure in Yeltsin's "tennis circle". Borodin paved the way for Mr. Pacolli to privatize textile factories first, while in Moscow it is an open secret that Pacolli has until recently moved Borodin's money. Former prosecutor Carla Del Ponte raised the same claims in Switzerland.

This summary of Mr. Pacolli's CV does not at all speak of a businessman who does not compromise with political power, otherwise Yeltsin's daughter would be using Valon Lluka's credit card and not Behgjet Pacolli's.

So we are not at all dealing with a principled and somewhat naive old man; on the contrary, we are dealing with a businessman who, from day one, has been trained and cultivated as a puppet of politics and power - as a prestanome.

And in conditions where a businessman who is prescient and prone to political power openly challenges a power in his own territory, there are only two logical options:

a) Pacolli was wrong.

b) Someone else is defending Pacolli

Usually, the misguided are uninterested in numbers and too attached to emotional or aesthetic aspects. Their profile is almost identical to that of the Prime Minister of Albania.

Pacolli appears extremely calm and calculated; he has made no mistakes with his figures and has not emotionally experienced any of the embarrassment he has caused his people and the Albanian government, which consequently leads one to believe that someone else is protecting Pacolli. Someone else is commanding him like a puppet.

It is not at all difficult to identify this factor, as long as Mr. Pacolli's CV resonates strongly not only as a puppet of Yeltsin or Borodin, but also as an acrobat who in the last month has been taking concrete steps to reach a deal in Kazakhstan for the sale of half of the shares he owns.

Another interesting fact is that the proceedings in Tirana against Mr. Pacolli were not initiated by SPAK, but by the Tirana Prosecutor's Office. This may have come about because the new State Department administration (OPDAT) may have exclusive knowledge of the absolute inability of SPAK head Altin Dumani to move forward with investigations that could implicate Ms. Balluku.

And yet, the game that Pacolli has opened in Tirana is beyond any corrupt scheme or Albanian official, because Pacolli has left a geostrategic asset like Vlora Airport exposed, where at a minimum the potential new owner with ties to the Kremlin could quickly land several anti-drone radars or interception systems there that change the balance of power in the Mediterranean.