Klodian Tomorri
At the end of November, Bankers Petroleum launched two more export shipments of oil from the Patos-Marinza field through the Petrolifera port in Vlora. The ships, which had a total of over 200,000 barrels of oil, were sold through an Italian brokerage company called Mercuria.
According to the agreement, the agreed value for the sale of oil was around 12 million euros and the payment was to be made in December. But the money neither arrived in Albania nor went to the Bankers' account in Vienna. It disappeared into a secret account whose country and bank are unknown.
The scandal erupted when one of Bankers' financiers asked the Italian broker for documents on where the export money had been deposited in order to legally account for the transaction. Mercuria's response was that the money had been deposited into a designated account by Bankers' Chinese bosses in Fier. These were Bankers' general manager Luntao Chen and deputy manager Zhang Fuguo.
Luntao Chen, CEO of Bankers Petroleum Albania
This was a question that cost the finance employee a lot. Shortly after, he was fired.
Criminal activity
The concession agreement allows Bankers Petroleum to open accounts and freely move money from oil sales anywhere outside the country. This is the clause that Bankers exploited for the famous Vienna account.
But opening an account abroad is not without conditions. Bankers are obliged to report to the AKBN and the Albanian fiscal authorities every account, in every bank in the world, where it receives payments for Albanian oil exports. And this is not without purpose.
Fiscal law obliges the company to document with the relevant invoices every expense or movement of funds it makes from these accounts because on the basis of these documents, the state documents the company's balance sheet and the share of profit it is entitled to receive.
But in the case of a secret account, where no one knows where it is except the Chinese, the state has no way of verifying how the money was spent. Beyond that, this is an unaccountable action on the balance sheet.
Sending money to a secret account is practically a violation of the concession agreement, as the company no longer behaves like a concessionaire, which only has the right to use a public asset, but behaves like its owner, which can hide the money wherever it wants.
Secondly, this is a financial criminal activity, which completely eliminates Albania's fiscal authorities and with it the state's ability to protect its share of the proceeds.
But the most serious part of this whole story is that this action occurred precisely at a time when the company was under investigation by SPAK and the authorities were seeking to collect billions of lek in debts that Bankers owes to the state.
At the beginning of last month, immediately after the GJKKO approved the extension of the investigations against Bankers by another three months, SPAK requested the Chinese company to make available the movements of the account in Vienna and any supporting documents for any transactions carried out from this account.
It is not known whether SPAK has become aware of the 12 million euros that disappeared from Bankers' secret account during December. But this is information that is very easily obtained. Bankers employees all know it. Capital has already verified it.
Editorial
