Ola Xama, BIRN
Kërçiku, 78, says he chose Farka for its tranquility, beautiful nature and clean air. But within a decade, this former “paradise” was destroyed by the wave of construction and the noise of heavy machinery.
“Look at how it’s done, construction site,” Kërçiku says, extending his hand towards the buildings under construction. “Okay, we have to pave the way for development, but not everything is concrete. Let’s leave something for nature,” he added.
Farka e Vogël is located just 9 kilometers from the center of Tirana and is today the newest destination for residences and villa complexes for the capital’s wealthy residents. At least 15 villa complexes and two palaces are currently under construction, while other projects are awaiting approval of permits from the Municipality of Tirana.
The high pressure for construction has also led to an increase in land values. Residents say they prefer not to sell, but to give the land for development in exchange for construction areas.
This is also the example of the Minister of Justice, Ulsi Manja.
After investing 3 million lek to purchase a land area of 1 thousand square meters in 2021, Manja aims to transform it into an asset worth hundreds of thousands of euros within a villa complex with swimming pools and surrounding walls on the edge of Lake Farka.
Three years after purchasing the land, Manja and his wife applied for a building permit at the Municipality of Tirana for a villa complex project, together with other owners of neighboring land in Farka.
The transactions carried out by the justice minister raise questions, as he bought the land below market value from a local Socialist Party official and intends to develop it through a company that won a concession from the Rama government.
Data obtained by BIRN from three real estate agencies and the State Cadastre Agency suggest that the justice minister bought the land at a price almost three times cheaper than the market value and almost half the average value of sales declared in the same period in this area.
“Transactions by senior officials, which are outside market conditions, are subject to reasonable suspicion and deserve to be explored in detail to see the involvement of third parties as a disguise for corrupt interests and exchanges of favors,” says Zef Preçi, an economics expert and head of the Institute for Economic Studies.
Minister Manja did not answer detailed questions, but told BIRN through a spokesperson that he and his family members were subject to the law on the declaration and control of assets by the High Inspectorate for the Declaration and Control of Assets, HIDAKKI.
“The declaration is available for review according to the procedures provided for by the law and I am completely transparent about my assets,” Manja said.
Contract with Maloku
The 1,000 square meter land owned by Minister Ulsi Manja is located in cadastral zone 1605 in Farka e Vogël with property number 397/9 and was registered as a mortgage in 2014 on the basis of a Land Acquisition Act, AMTP. The property is bordered to the south by Lake Farka and is surrounded in other parts by two other owners.
Manja bought the land in 2021 from Arben Maloku, who at the time held the position of administrator of the local unit of Zall Herri, part of the Municipality of Tirana.
Maloku is also known for his construction ventures as the founder of the company Arb& Trans 2010; which was investigated in 2022 for the construction of additional floors without a permit on a building on “Myslym Shyri” street in Tirana.
Documents obtained by BIRN show that Maloku had purchased the land he sold to Manja in October 2019 for a price of 20 thousand euros, or 20 euros per square meter. After revaluing the property, Maloku sold it to Manja for 3 million lekë, or 3 thousand lekë per m2.
Three real estate agencies contacted by BIRN assess this transaction as abnormally low, while reporting land prices of at least 120 euros per square meter, or 4 times higher in the same area. The agents also stressed that the demand for properties in Farkë e Vogël has been increasing and that it is impossible to find land on the first line of the lake on the market.
“They are all sold,” said one real estate agent.
The State Cadastre Agency also reports higher prices than the sales contract between Maloku and Manja in 2021.
“The average price of sales of agricultural properties in cadastral zone 1605 in Farkë e Vogël for the period January-December 2021, according to registered acts, is 5,753 lek/m2, while the reference price is 448 lek/m2,” ASHK said in a written response.
The value is several times lower compared to another piece of land purchased by Maloku in the same area in 2017.
The plot has an area of 1,650 m2 and was purchased by Maloku for over 22 million lek or 134 euros per m2 – over 4 times more expensive than the land he sold to Manja.
Maloku told BIRN in a telephone conversation that the value of land in that area and throughout Tirana varies by meters, while insisting that he had sold the land for the same price he had bought it for.
He also added that he had bought it in 2019 with the intention of building a house for himself, but had later changed his mind and decided to sell it to Manja.
Maloku linked the low price of the land to the existence of a high-voltage pole next to it.
“That land was under a high-voltage pole, there is a high-voltage pole. It is close to the lake, probably 100 meters from the lake and the land has a high voltage pole above it, which is why it had this price,” said Maloku.
“The gentleman in question was not even a minister when I gave him the land to my knowledge. At the time I sold it, I can say with complete conviction that he was not a minister,” he added.
The difference between the purchase price and the market value in the transaction carried out by the Minister of Justice creates room for suspicion.
“Here there may be room for an investigation with the suspicion of a fictitious contract to hide income, as suspicions may arise that the other payment was made in cash or with a benefit that the seller may have received in another form from the public official,” said former prosecutor Gentian Trenova, who now works as a lawyer.
“This connection is insufficient with the analysis of the contract alone, but there is room for further investigation,” he added.
Wealth trajectory
Ulsi Manja worked for two decades as an assistant judge, prosecutor and lawyer, before entering politics in 2013 as a Socialist Party MP in the Albanian Parliament. Manja has also served as a member of the special committee on judicial reform and as chairman of the Laws Committee. Since September 2021, he has headed the Ministry of Justice in the Rama cabinet.
Manja has been subject to asset declarations and conflicts of interest since 2003, when he held the position of prosecutor. Analysis of the asset declarations, conducted by BIRN, shows a trajectory of the family’s wealth starting from zero and reaching a value of 46.5 million lek by the end of 2023 – with an average increase of 2.7 million lek per year.
Manja’s increase in wealth stems from real estate transactions.
In 2004, he claims to have bought an apartment in Tirana worth 5.4 million lekë with the help of two loans taken out by his brother and sister, while in 2010 he bought a second apartment in Kavajë worth 30 thousand euros with the income earned from his work as a lawyer.
But the last three years have proven to be intensive in the field of real estate sales and purchases for Minister Ulsi Manja.
In 2021, Minister Manja’s family purchased the land in Farkë e Vogël, while in 2022 it sold the apartments it owned in Tirana and Kavajë for the respective prices of 140 thousand euros and 50 thousand euros, creating bank liquidity worth almost 200 thousand euros at the end of 2022.
In the same year, Manja purchased another apartment in Tirana with an area of 156.7 m2 for a total value of 115 thousand euros, or 734 euros per square meter. He declares that by the end of 2022, he had repaid 68,350 euros for the purchase of the apartment through a credit line, while the remaining 46, 650 euros is an obligation to the construction company.
Real estate transactions are a significant source of income for the Manja family; they account for almost 19% of total income in two decades.
Following a right to information request, BIRN waited three months to access the Justice Minister’s asset declarations from the HIDACCI. Initially, the HIDACCI refused to respond and only after a complaint filed with the office of the Commissioner for the Right to Information and a new request did it make them available. The HIDACCI did not respond to a question about whether it had ever conducted an administrative investigation into Manja’s asset declarations.
Conflict of interest?
Lake Farka on the outskirts of Tirana is an artificial reservoir built in the 1980s to irrigate agricultural lands below its dam. The area retained its rural character for more than a decade after the fall of communism, but it did not escape the pressure dictated by the construction sector.
The lake is today a natural attraction, surrounded by villa complexes and residential residences, which are advertised on real estate agency websites with prices ranging from 300 thousand to over 1 million euros depending on their surface area and location.
Even the land purchased by the Minister of Justice, Ulsi Manja, seems to be destined for an expensive villa complex.
In November of last year, Manja and his wife applied together with their border neighbors, the company “Brunes” and the property
its owners Geront and Bledar Çela, for a development permit from the Municipality of Tirana for the purpose of building a residential and service complex with 1, 2 and 3-storey buildings, with swimming pools and a perimeter wall in this area. The details of the agreement between the landowners and the “Brunes” company are unknown and do not appear to have been declared by Minister Manja at the HIDAKKI in 2023.
The Municipality of Tirana said in a response to BIRN that they had applied for a construction permit on April 26, a request registered with the municipality on June 10 of this year. “The request is currently in the administrative review phase,” the Municipality said.
The “Brunes” company has been operating in Albania since 2003 in the field of trade in hydrosanitary and household equipment and the sale of construction materials. “Brunes” is also the beneficiary of a concession contract from the “Rama” government for the construction of the Vlora Marina, as well as part of the consortium that obtained public land for a symbolic rent of 1 Euro through a decision of the Council of Ministers in October 2021, at a time when Manja was also part of the government cabinet.
Minister Manja did not answer the question about a possible conflict of interest with the “Brunes” company, while the Council of Ministers refused to make Manja’s position available during the meeting where the lease of public land was approved.
“Evaluations, debates and reports in government meetings remain confidential,” the Council of Ministers responded.
But for legal experts, such a relationship raises “red flags.”
“From 2021 until the moment the contract is signed, there is a red flag that leads to suspicions to investigate,” Trenova said. “There are cases when these benefits have been considered forms of corrupt payment, because corruption is not only about handing over money, but also about other benefits with permits, licenses or construction permits, especially when we are dealing with a senior public official who has influence in other institutions,” he concluded. BIRN
Note: The title is from the AlbEu.con Editorial Board!
