Albanian Media: Eavesdropping of Italian Anti-Mafia about Influence over Tenders in Tirana. 80 Procurement Processes were already reported by Open Procurement Albania for their risk of Corruption and irregularities
Several news portals have used our databases in January in reporting on corruption and irregularities. Some of them report on alleged connections between eavesdropping made by the 2017 Italian Anti-Mafia (published in Italy in January 2021) and the tenders reported for risk of corruption and irregularities on our database for Transparent Procurement. The Italian Anti-Mafia eavesdropping into persons being investigated as members of the Mafia Organization, Ndrag’heta, sheds light on conversations about pre-arranged tenders and people of suspicious influence over authorities of Official Tirana. The eavesdropping transcripts were published in January 2021 on the Italian media, and were partially republished in Tirana, mainly by media portals or freelance journalists. Certain journalists drew a logical line between the eavesdropping of “people with influence” or “clientelist tenders” and the list of tenders marked by RedFlags for their risk of corruption in our database for Public Procurement.
Our organization has created several databases for some years now, monitoring public contracts in sectors of Health, national Infrastructure, and Municipality. Opening data, using OpenContracting standards, we enable an automatic evaluation of tenders for their risk of lack of competition, and disqualification of all the operators, who submit cost-effective economic bids. These tenders are listed and marked by a Red Flag, as tenders exposed to a high risk of irregularities and procedural issues. The Tender RedFlag Index is an instrument for reporting corruption, an instrument developed by the civil society in the country.
Some excerpts from the media portals:
- Exit.Al published on 21 January an article entitled: Ndragheta’s Eavesdropping involving Tirana Municipality and Health Sector.
- Dosja.al publishes on 23 January 2021 an article entitled: Data/How did Ndragheta’s company win 80 public tenders in Albania? Open Data raised the red flag, but no one listened.
The article above refers to open and transparent data provided by databases of the organization AIS. The editorial line, arguments, and facts in this article belong to the media and the author, and not necessarily confirmed by OpenDataAlbania. You may find our database by clicking on opencorporates.al, spendingdata.al, opendata.al, openprocurement.al, and aksesdrejtesi.al
