The only time he spoke about the arrests at Bankers Petroleum, Edi Rama told a half-truth. And as the prime minister never tires of repeating to us, half-truths are the biggest lies.
"We have won an arbitration with Bankers and Bankers owes us 240 million euros," declared Edi Rama. But the truth is different.
The Albanian government and Bankers Petroleum faced off in arbitration over expenses from 2012-2017, and at the end of the process, the Arbitration Court decided not to recognize $236 million in expenses declared by the Chinese company during this period. But this does not mean that Bankers now owes the state budget $236 million, as the prime minister claims.
The calculation is very simple. From 2004 to the end of last year, Bankers has declared a total of 5.33 billion euros in income. For the same period, it has also declared 5.44 billion euros in tax expenses. This results in the company having a tax loss of 117 million euros. With the cancellation of 236 million euros in expenses by the court, the tax balance changes and from 117 million euros in loss goes to 119 million euros in tax profit.
The concession contract stipulates that when Bankers makes a cumulative profit, the state receives half of it. So, out of the amount of 119 million euros, the state has the right to receive 59.5 million euros as profit tax. But there is another factor here too. The Chinese company claims this much money as VAT to be reimbursed.
In short, the 240 million euros that the Prime Minister says he owes the Bankers state are actually zero. A farce at heart. And this is easily verifiable. What has prevented the government so far from receiving the money that the Prime Minister claims, since the arbitration decision has been issued for more than 1 year? Now there is another truth that is just as big.
In the last 5 years of the concession contract, Banker Petroleum was obliged to reinvest significant amounts to leave the field in a exploitable state and to pay into a special escrow account the money for the so-called abandonment costs. The latter, i.e. the cost of environmental remediation, is estimated at at least 300-400 million euros and according to the contract, the company should have started paying them into the special account since July of last year. This has not happened because the Ministry of Infrastructure has not done so.
So, the government has made no effort to recover the 400 million euros in environmental costs owed to the budget. It has made no reconciliation of tax balances after the arbitration decision and has made no effort to get more money from oil, but has almost completely approved the expenses declared by the Chinese company. Instead, authorities led the police to arrest several Chinese and the former administrator Leonidha Çobo.
This is identical to the movie that Albanians have already seen with the Tirana incinerator. The ending will be the same. Leonidha Çobo has been appointed to be the sacrificial lamb to close the Bankers manhole, just as Lefter Koka was appointed the sacrificial lamb of the incinerator. And citizens should be satisfied with the sacrificial lambs because money always goes in the wrong direction.
Like the bribes that Bela's guys took for VAT refunds, as well as the consultancies, the threads of which led to the office of Edi Rama's secretary. But these are not to be investigated. Because the goal here is not to take the money that belongs to the citizens, but to take Bankers and put it in other hands.
Because the way to get money from the Bankers is to contest unreasonable expenses, as happened with the 2012-2017 expenses. But the government decided to act differently by sabotaging the public interest.
And strangely enough, in the midst of sabotaging the public interest, Belinda always stands. Both at the incinerator with the project implementation unit, and at Bankers.
Coincidence, perhaps?