03 10 2007 Tirana _ Four former officials of the state-owned company Albpetrol were arrested on Wednesday in the city of Fier, 50 km south of Tirana, on charges of corruption and embezzlement.
The operation was coordinated by the economic crime unit of the Fier police district. Details of the operation were released by the Ministry of Interior.
Those arrested were the former director of the company, Fatos Nikaj, specialists Llambi Bucka and Agim Asllani, and engineer Hilmi Demiraj.
Just two weeks ago Albania’s Deputy Minister of Transport, Nikolin Jaka, and several senior officials from his ministry were arrested on charges of corruption related to a series of road tenders over the last two months.
In addition to Jaka, police operations, codenamed “Clean Hands”, have resulted in the detention of eight persons. Wednesday’s operation was codenamed “Clean Hands 3”.
Jaka and the others arrested have denied the charges.
The Clean Hands operations, which echo the campaign slogan of the current governing centre-right coalition during the July 2005 parliamentary elections, have taken place at a time when the government is under fire over another major road construction project.
The prosecutor-general’s office has been investigating possible irregularities in the tender for the construction of the Durres-Kukes highway, Albania’s largest public works project for two decades.
The opposition Socialist Party has called for a parliamentary commission to be set up in order to investigate the project.
The highway would link the port of Durres with Kosovo, cutting travel time between the Albanian coast and Pristina, from 8 hours to 2.5 hours.
The project includes a 7-km-tunnel, the longest in the Balkans, now being built by the American-Turkish consortium, Bechtel-Enka. (Birn)
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