Democratic Party Chairman Sali Berisha shared an analysis of journalist Ola Xama, showing how former FBI top official Charles McGonigal managed to earn a public contract in Albania after his meeting with Albanian Premier Edi Rama.

“How the Russians won the oilfields after Rama’s meeting with McGonigal. I invite you to read the investigation of the journalist Ola Xama”, Berisha wrote on his Facebook page, sharing the following analysis:

Albania is ranked second in the continental Europe in terms of onshore oil resources. The oil coming out of the wells is not of the best quality that is required by the markets, as it is viscous and requires large amounts of oil diluents to make it more fluid and easier to extract from the underground. However, its quality is not a problem, considering that the Ballsh refinery (in Albania) and other refineries worldwide as well manage to process it and until today yielded great profits to the oil producers.

Paradoxically, despite having large underground oil reserves, Albanian citizens pay the highest fuel prices in the world. Today, all the oil produced in the country is exported, whereas the country’s only oil refinery was degraded during a failed privatization process until they washed their hands of it selling it for scrap.

Also the oilfields of Cakran-Mollaj, Gorisht-Kocul and Amonica could not be an exception to the Albanian context. To explain better what happened, the story goes like this: A company connected with the Russian Gazprom Neft and the Serbian NIS came to Albania, represented by an Austrian businessman via the firm Jurimex Kommerz Transit GmbH. The company applied to Albpetrol to take over the Cakran-Mollaj and Gorisht-Kocul oilfields. The request was submitted by the end of 2016, and in July 2017 Albpetrol sent a draft hydrocarbon agreement to the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy, which was accepted by the ministry and Albpetrol was authorized to negotiate the final contract and applied for a license at the Albanian National Agency of Natural Resources (AKBN).

On September 9, 2017, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama received in his office the FBI Special Agent Charles McGonigal (now retired and arrested), accompanied by Agron Neza. At the request of Agron Neza, McGonigal urged the Albanian Prime Minister to be cautious with the oilfield licenses granted to Russian front companies. Agron Neza and Dorian Duçka both had financial interests in the decision to grant these licenses, according to the FBI files.

The negotiations with Jurimex stagnated and in February 2018 Albpetrol opened a tender for the concession of the oilfields in the abovementioned locations. Out of nine participating companies, the tender was won by the TransOil Group with Shefqet Dizdari as administrator and owner of 31.4% of shares. Although indebted to Albpetrol for the in-kind contribution for the oil extracted from the Visoka oilfield, the TransOil Group won the tender.

Shefqet Dizdari became partner in the law company Lawoffice & Investigation in February 2019, along with Charles McGonigal, Agron Neza and Mark Thomas Rossini.

In this whole history, the only argument the Albanian Prime Minister gave during his communication on Thursday was the fact that the oilfield concession procedure was done by tender, but failing to answer to why, a year before the tender, Albpetrol had started negotiations without a tender with another company and while an agreement was being reached the papers were torn and a tender was opened? What prevailed here, the principle of open competition or orders behind closed doors?

Also, the Albanian Prime Minister did not explain why winner of the bid was declared a company that was indebted to the state-owned Albpetrol for the extraction of crude oil from the Albanian underground, and instead of taking measures against it for amassing public property, the opposite happened, by granting it three other areas.

Why didn’t the Prime Minister explain that out of nine companies that took part in the race, it was won by the a company in which Person A and Person B (in the indictment against McGonigal), respectively Agron Neza and Dorian Duçka, had financial interests?

In all this history, it doesn’t really matter what the procedure was with an open or closed competition, because many public assets today are given to foreigners without even a formal competition. It is of little importance whether the law was respected or not, since the majority leader has the means and numbers to pass the laws he wants. What matters here is: who protects the interests and assets of Albanians, the United States, the FBI or the officials who have been elected for the task?

Today we find ourselves in the same situation we were one decade ago: a country with abundant oil sources, and at the same time oil importers and with higher prices than ten years ago. The state-owned oil production company Albpetrol, which has hydrocarbon agreements for oilfields, results in financial losses; the accumulated losses reached €55 million at the end of 2021, while its financial reports are unreliable and the auditors of the financial statements express Report with Reservation.