EU in corruption scandal that involves Albania

TIRANA, March 28 – Albania local media reported Wednesday news that three Italians, one working with the European Union personnel in Brussels, were arrested and accused of corruption concerning some tenders for the EU offices in Albania and India. Jos Colpin of the Belgian prosecutor office confirmed the names of the three arrested persons as Giancarlo Ciotti, 46, an EU staff official, Sergio Tricarico, 39, assistant to e Euro parliamentarian and Angelo Troiano, 60, involved in real estate business. On Tuesday Belgian prosecutor office checked the EU offices in Brussels investigating for a great level of corruption, according to Colpin quoted from Gazeta Shqip. “For more than ten years there were bribes of millions of euros,” he said. The investigation started after a complaint for irregularities in a tender some years ago. It is believed the investigation started three years ago. The investigation has checked procedures in Luxembourg, Italy, France and Albania and India as well. According to German magazine Stern, the Italian EC official had renovated his house in exchange of giving the tender to a winner. The annual budget for the EC buildings was 56 million euros. The EC itself had made an investigation and following that they had involved a Belgian police anti-deceit unit specialized in such cases. The Italian newspaper “Corriere della Sera” wrote that a Finnish company had told the Commission they were obliged to pay 345,000 euros in a bribe to win a tender for the delegation offices in India.
That involved the opening of the new European Community delegation office in Tirana, less than two years ago. It is believed that the Italians were involved in a bribery business. The new office located in the Tirana suburbs, in Laprake, is a new building, all wearing glass windows, for which rumors say the monthly rent could be up to 50,000 euros.
In 1999 the commission was involved in another corruption case which took them to a general resignation. In 2003 there was a scandal on Eurostat agency, the office of statistics of the commission, when there were discovered secret bank accounts of EU officials following suspicious contracts.