cAPITAL
On June 17, a strange business transaction occurred. Timak, a company that manufactures, converts, and assembles metal and plastic structures for vehicles, sold 49 percent of its shares.
Timak is a company that has been heavily promoted by the government recently. Its owner, Arjeta Puca, has been invited to Prime Minister Edi Rama's podcast, while the company's premises in Kashar have been visited several times by government ministers.
Edi Rama and Arjeta Puca
However, Ms. Puca decided to sell 49 percent of the shares of her flagship company, so much trumpeted by the government, for a price of only 490 euros. The buyer was Ron Yeffet, an Israeli with Albanian citizenship and secretly very close to Edi Rama.
Sale of 49 percent of Timak shares for 490 euros
What prompted Ms. Puca to sell her business so cheaply?
Everything would become clear only two months later. The sale was a targeted shooting, the shots of which were heard in Ardi Veliu's office.
Army vehicle monopoly
At the height of the summer season, while most Albanians were on vacation, precisely on August 4, the state-owned military company Kayo and Timak established a joint company. The company is called Timak Defence and is owned 80 percent by Timak and 20 percent by the state-owned company Kayo.
The establishment of Timak Defence
The company's object is the production or adaptation of special motor vehicles with an open architecture that allows the installation of weapon systems and any other system required by the armed forces or other security structures, for use by the Armed Forces of the Republic of Albania, security and civil emergency structures and other domestic or international clients.
In short, this is the company that will have the monopoly of supplying the army, police, guard, civil emergencies, etc. with vehicles. The company's place of business will be in the former vehicle spare parts factory, in Shkoza, in the building where the News 24 television station was located.
Five days after Ardi Veliu and Timak representatives formed the joint company, the government deployed police and military forces, violently removing News journalists from the building.
The state's monopoly on supplying vehicles is a very big business, tens of millions of euros a year. But it still remains unclear what the added value the company creates. Given that Albania cannot produce vehicles, the chances are that this will be a low-value-added trade, with the new company Timak Defence importing vehicles from abroad and adapting them locally.
Businessman or realtor?
Ron Yeffet is not an unknown name to the public in Albania. He tried to enter as the founder of Air Albania, but after buying 23 percent of the shares of the parent company MDN he left immediately after a month. It is said after the clashes he had with Sinan Idrizi. However, this was only one of Yeffet's adventures in Albania. The others have been even more sensational.
In January of this year, former Finance Minister Arben Ahmetaj publicly stated that Rama had asked him to sell Albania's public debt to Mr. Yeffet.
"I have an episode with the head of the organization and an Israeli friend of his at the flower garden. Because in addition to the Garden of Eden, there is also the flower room where he eats. He asked me to the table with his friend, I was before the Eurobond issue, in 2018, to transfer the debt privately (private slement) to his friend. He insisted twice. I told him it can't be done. It's not in the interest of Albania," Ahmetaj declared in an interview for Syri Televizione.
Rama never specifically responded to the serious accusations of his former deputy Ahmetaj, but was content to state that he did not comment on the accusations of people who have problems with justice. And yet, there was more than just an accusation here.
In addition to the debt, Ron Yeffet attempted another adventure in Albania. This was the takeover of the Albanian embassy in the United States of America in order to build residential units on its territory.
This is also a denunciation made by Ahmetaj, but Kapitali has verified it from three independent sources, who were involved in this matter. In fact, this was not a plan from scratch. Mr. Yeffet had attempted something similar in Senegal, with the construction of the building for the Senegalese delegation to the UN.
The attempt to privatize Albania's sovereign land in the US did not go through, as it was opposed by the former Foreign Minister at the time, Ditmir Bushati, who refused to sign the alienation of the embassy. But Ron Yeffet did not give up.
Friend of the Prime Minister
Mr. Yeffet is a close friend of Prime Minister Edi Rama. The two have been seen together on more than one occasion.
Edi Rama and Ron Yeffet
Meanwhile, some media outlets have reported that Rama and Yeffet have met frequently outside the public eye. One such meeting is thought to have taken place in an airport VIP lounge.
Some sources close to Mr. Rama say that Ron Yeffet is like a kind of consultant to the prime minister on private financial matters. But again, these always remain in the context of unverified statements. What is proven is the fact that Rama and Yeffet are friends, as well as the fact that Mr. Yeffet has a not very clean background.
In addition to Edi Rama, Mr. Yeffet is also friends with several African leaders. One of them is former Senegalese President Macky Sall, who left power last year. Mr. Sally and Edi Rama have two things in common. In addition to being friends of Yeffet, both of them were lucky enough to see opposition leaders imprisoned just before the elections. But these could be just coincidences.
Ron Yeffet in Senegal
And yet, as in Albania, in Senegal, Mr. Yeffet had managed to secure a large sum of money from his proximity to the leader. Sally's Senegalese government had given the Israeli businessman 10,000 meters of state-owned land on the coast of Dakar to build a marina and residential towers. But the project never went to fruition.
Because in Senegal, unlike Albania, political rotation is not a foreign concept. Shortly after former President Sally left power, the new opposition government canceled the contract with Yeffet and renationalized the land, arguing that the deal was a purely corrupt affair.
But while they followed him from Senegal, Mr. Yeffet found his luck in Albania. And Albania, unlike African countries, offers the highest degree of legal security for businessmen of this type; the absence of political rotation.
Mazal Tov!
Editorial
