No one knows how he did it in time: taking the last flight from Brussels to Tirana or maybe the new government jet that Turkish President Erdogan gave recently as a gift to Edi Rama

The Minister of Reconstruction, aka “the tiger of the Albanian finances”, Arben Ahmetaj, despite the Conference of Donors in Brussels closed in the late hours last night, managed to enter triumphantly Blendi Fevziu’s show Opinion at 22:14.

Fevziu, in the case of the €1.15 billion that was “harvested” successfully, decided to change the theme of his show, abandoning the 100^th anniversary of Tirana as capital city and dedicated it entirely to the “garlic” Edi Rama put in Brussels.

Following Ahmetaj’s triumphant entrance, he said:

“It was a spectacular international support in solidarity with the Albanian people and the families that lost their dear ones and houses, it was in an indescribable level. Now, €400 million is in the form of grants, donated money, not debts, so direct donations. Nearly €650 million are soft loans, with a very low cost, like in the interest aspect, they are not commercial loans. Some of them have less than 2% interest, almost 1%. These are associated to the entire damages we had in November 26 and if you read all the EU report and principles, highlighted both in the report and (in the conference) today, they gou beyond the reconstruction, reaching to the economic rebuilding”.

But only a few minutes later, the other guest in the studio, Gjergj Buxhuku, one that knows pretty well what grants, soft loans, banks, etc are, intervened saying that, based on the official tables that had just been published by the Conference, it wasn’t true that the donated money was €400 million but nearly half of that.

After that, Ahmetaj lost his voice and said that he would see the tables again, he bypassed the lie he had just told live on television saying “the figure is not important, because we must be grateful and say thank you for every donated Euro”.

Ahmetaj and Edi Rama had been in Brussels for two days and, before the Conference, as he said, they had many meetings with donors, bank creditors, and governments’ representatives, so they knew, more or less, the extent of donations and loans or debts that would be given.

Even though during the 90 minutes of Opinion it was not clearly understood how many of those €1.15 billion were donations and how many were debts that will be paid off by the Albanian taxpayers, the truth was revealed soon.

According to the official table, out of €1.15 billion accumulated last night, 885 million are loans. It means, the €400 million proclaimed by the “finances tiger” have reduced to a mere €265 million.