By Jeta Xharra
Bujar Ejupi, who was in charge of financances in the Air Navigation Service Agency, ANSA, has tired but hawkish blue eyes, thick eyebrows, pale skin and is unflinching despite being threatened and pushed around for the past two years.
Ejupi, a 37-year-old, spent a year dealing with threats that he would be fired if he continued to expose the negligence and corruption he encountered in his job – a threat, which after a year materialised. It took him yet another year to take his allegations to the police and convince them to take him seriously.
When I first meet him, Ejupi flips through files and documents he has brought along to prove his case. He is sitting next to his former colleague Ersen Shileku, who was head of operations at the same time that Ejupi was head of finances at the Kosovar agency.
For the past two years, Ejupi and Shileku have tried to raise the alarm about a series of contractual breaches and security issues at the Prishtina airport. Instead, they were fired from their jobs and their multiple emails sent to the government left unheeded.
After two years of a Sisyphean efforts to effect change within the system, Ejupi and Shileku have decided to make the case public, and become whistleblowers, a rarity in Kosovo public sector.
The legislation to protect whistleblowers is weak in Kosovo but a new law that is supposed to change this is underway.
Ejupi who served as deputy director of ANSA, the public agency co-managing the Prishtina Airport together with the private Turkish company Limak, revealed major contractual and security breaches - which according to his calculations have damaged Kosovo public purse in millions, and might have led to grave airport safety issues.
“If something happens with flights and passengers, we could not be able to live with ourselves if we did not come forward to tell the public that security and safety of flights is jeopardised because of the deliberate negligence, unprofessionalism and corruption that we saw happening while we were working there,” explained Ejupi who served as deputy director from mid 2016 until mid 2017.
The Air Navigation Services Agency operates all flights in Kosovo and it services Prishtina International Airport that is run by a consortium between Limak and Aeroports de Lyon, with the Turkish company Limak owning 90 per cent of the shares.
As head of operations, Shileku says, he noticed that safety and security of flights was being compromised from the first month he arrived.
“We had a powercut the day [Vice President] Joe Biden was about to land in Kosovo. I had just been appointed on the job as head of operations so it was my job to investigate why we had a cut,” explained Shileku who asked why the airport did not have a backup generator like most other airports in the region.
“This question totally backfired on me, after few exchanges my boss told me not to push it further,” said Shileku.
His supervisor, Bahri Nuredini, was appointed as the head the navigation services in 2011 by Hashim Thaci, the former prime minister and current president of Kosovo. Nuredini’s maternaluncle, Bekim Jashari, was head of the board of ANSA from July 2008 until January 2016, before he left to become mayor of Skenderaj.
Both Nuredini and Jashari are relatives of Adem Jashari, the most significant fighter in Kosovo recent history, who was killed by Serbian paramilitary troops together with 58 members of his family (mostly women and children) in a three day battle that took place in their village of Prekaz in March 1998.
Favored by PDK, several Jashari family members have basically been allowed to run the navigational services since 2008. When the airport was privatized in 2011, it also was aptly renamed “Prishtina International Airport Adem Jashari.”
It has become a rule of thumb in Kosovo to name an infrastructure project after a highly important and recent historic figure. The bigger the name, the bigger the stigma to question what is being done in that name.
Similarly “The Ibrahim Rugova highway” named after the peaceful resistant leader that organized Kosovo underground society in the 90s, cost the Kosovo taxpayer over 700 million euros, which were given to the American-Turkish consortium Bechtel-Enka to build the most expensive highway in Europe. The sum equalled Kosovo’s entire annual budget at the time of the highway’s commission.
According to the calculations done by Ejupi, Kosovo has lost roughly 14.5 million euros from the non fulfillment of the pre-concession contract and since 2011 has barely made over 30 million euros out of the 400 million projected to profit the country’s public purse during the 20[1]-year-concession. (He came to this figure by accounting 3 million for the missing Runway Safety Area that was supposed to be built, 5 million for the extension of the main road in order for the Taxiways Airplanes to maneuver, 2 million for the defrosting of the airplanes platform, 1.5 million for the training area for firefighters and 3 million for the reallocation of navigation equipment which was done by ANP ‘’Adem Jashari’’ instead of being done by LIMAK as envisaged by the PPP contract.)[2][3]
A CONTRACT UNFULFILLED
The Prishtina International Airport is split in two parts: ANSA and Limak both situated not far from each other on the edges of the airfield that lies 30 kilometers west of Prishtina.
The commercial part was sold as a private-public concession to the Turkish company Limak through a private-partnership agreement, PPP. Limak will manage the airport for the next 20 years under the condition that it invests 80 million euros to improve the infrastructure under the projection that it will make 400 million euros for Kosovo state coffers in two decades. The contract also makes it difficult for any other airport to be built in Kosovo during this period.
The publicly-run ANSA, on the other hand, is largely in charge of the Air Traffic Control Tower, telling flight pilots when to fly and when to land. Limak manages the airport itself, shops, airlines, baggages and flights.
Both entities manage airport services based on the PPP agreement - which the two whistleblowers claim has been violated since day one.
According to the deal a new terminal was constructed. It opened in October 2013 in a fancy ribbon cutting ceremony that included the Turkish President Reccep Tayip Erdogan, as well as the Albanian and Kosovar Prime Ministers, Edi Rama and Hashim Thaci.
“But behind this glitz facade of this big terminal, there are a lot of things that were in the PPP agreement but remained undone - things that are key for aviation standards,” Ejupi claims.
The National Audit Office in Kosovo reports confirm as much: in two reports published in 2014 and 2016 respectively, auditors concluded that the Kosovo government, in charge of overseeing the contract, was supervising its implementation poorly.
The final 2016 report states that “the outstanding works are not finished yet and it is not specified when and how they will be finalized.”
Works that are not yet finished include the runway safety area for airplanes (valued at: 3 million euros), taxiways for aircrafts (valued at 5 million euros), deicing facility (valued at: 2 million euros), and animprovised fire-fighters training area that was never built.
According to Limak, these works have not been finished because additional airfield space, currently occupied by KFOR, the NATO force stationed in Kosovo, is necessary.
For their part, the Kosovo government tried to convince KFOR to move and failing to do so agreed to close an eye to these obligations for now.
Meanwhile, Lorik Fejzullahu, the man in charge of overseeing the PPP contract on behalf of the Kosovo government, claims that “this is the best implemented contract in the region.” (Fejzullahu is currently advising the government over the Contour Global agreement, another colossal private-partnership agreement that Kosovo government has signed in 2018).
Ejupi and Shileku list additional works that they say are compromising the security of flights.
“I started getting complaints from air traffic controllers that the tower was cold in the evenings and at nights when they had to operate flights,” said Ejupi. “This prompted me to check what is wrong with our heating system, only to find out that this was never built by the Turkish company.”
But when Ejupi checked the contract, he realized that Limak “was obliged to build a tower with an independent heating and cooling system as well as a tower with continuus 24/7 power supply - both of which we clearly did not have,” he said.
BIRN has had access to more than thirty letters, e-mails and documents dating since August 2016 in which Ejupi and Shileku raise questions that relate to safety and security of flights as well as other suspicions regarding irregular employments, dodgy radar fixes, suspicions of kick back money being paid to cover for unfinished work and other reports of corruptive behavior.
At first, these letters were addressed to the Kosovo government at the time: Isa Mustafa, then Prime Minister, Avdullah Hoti, Finance Minister and in charge of the department for oversight of the PPP contract with Limak; and Lutfi Zharku, Transport Minister.
These reports fell on deaf ears because Mustafa government never replied, even when Ejupi and Shileku reported that their previous reports were the reason they were thrown out of their jobs in August 2017. The same letters were then sent once again to the Haradinaj government, after they came into power in the end of 2017.
“I am not a judge, the issues that they [Ejupi and Shileku] are reporting have to be investigated and dealt with by the courts,” PM Haradinaj told BIRN in December
The two whistleblowers have taken the matter to the police and prosecution, who have interviewed them. Police and the state prosecutor have told BIRN that they are doing a preliminary “collection of evidence” based on these suspicions but no formal investigation has been launched almost a year since Ejupi and Shileku first reported it to the police.
An unclassified EULEX report that was leaked to BIRN, predicted that this investigation is likely to be shelved.
“[I]t is highly likely that there are serious safety issues, poor management practices and potential corruption taking place at the airport in Pristina that require further investigation,” the report written in late 2017 reads.
“Given the clear and obvious links between high level officials at the airport and political figures it is unlikely that any such investigation could be done without interference by individuals in positions of influence and power,” continues the report that BIRN accessed in early 2018.
THE MULTI-PURPOSE DRIVER
A letter that Ejupi sent to the Anti-Corruption Agency on August 31, 2017 lists ten suspicions of corruptive practices that he has identified amongst which promotion of staff in positions without the right qualifications, mismanagement of assets, mismanagement of budgets, workers who are paid a salary but never come to work, a mismanaged 7 million euro contract to relocate radar equipment and software, and other concerns.
When challenged, Nuredini has admitted that over 15 people who are employed in ANSA are relatives or friends of his and Bekim Jashari. He even admitted to asking Limak to employ his brother.
“My brother works as a baggage handler in LIMAK since 2013... It is true that I asked a friend in Limak if he can do this for me, if he can hire my brother as a seasonal worker. We are not strangers there, they showed understanding,” Nuredini told BIRN.
Nuredini highlighted that he is not the only top manager in the airport who has helped family members get a job there, there have been others who did it before him. BIRN investigations confirm that other top managers that currently work for ANSA also have their family members employed in Limak.
But one of these employments stands out from the rest.
BIRN found a document that proved that Limak was paying the company “H & B,” owned by Murat Mecini, 10,000 euros per month for consultancy services.
In addition to being a Jashari relative, Mecini was the personal driver of Bekim Jashari while he was head of the ANSA board, and continues to do the same job since Jashari became Mayor of Skenderaj in early 2018, a Skenderaj press officer confirmed.
During all this time, Mecini has been paid the regular large amount of money from Limak.
In an interview for Jeta ne Kosove program, Haldun Firat Kokturk, the head of Limak was asked what services could a driver of an important political figure be doing for the company.
“He is giving us consultancy...we are having seasonal workers for cleaning and security sometimes. He is coordinating that and giving reports,” said Kokturk.
When probed about these services, and confronted with the questions that the drivers in Kosovo have been known to be used as intermediaries for kick-back money to be extracted from businesses, Kokturk said, “It may smell like that to you but…he is just the owner of the company, he has other workers working there.”
Kokturk explained that the contract for these services is still ongoing and the 10,000 euro fee is given to this company because they “have connections” to find cleaners and security officers. Once they find them, Limak pays each of these seasonal staff separately. BIRN asked to see Mecini’s qualifications and details of this contract but Limak refused to provide access.
During the course of this BIRN investigation, Mecini has changed the ownership of this company. He has removed himself and put Ilker Yesilmenderes,a Turkish national, as the registered owner of “H & B”.
However, the history of registered businesses is a public record in Kosovo and it proves that Mecini was owner of “H &B ShpK” from 2013 until a few months ago, when BIRN send in questions to him and Jashari regarding the contract.
When Mecini was asked to comment on the skills he possesses to consult Limak, he said, “my contracts are none of your concern” over a telephone conversation. Jashari did not respond to questions.
BIRN’s investigation also revealed that apart from the consultancy contract given to Mecini, Limak has employed Sinan Thaci, the son of Hashim Thaci’s brother; Yll Hyseni, the son of Former Foreign Affairs Minister Skender Hyseni, Kadrie Buja, the wife of Shukri Buja, the mayor of Lipjan, the municipality where the airport is situated was hired and then fired as soon as her husband stopped being a mayor.
According to Ejupi and Shileku, these dealings and favors between Limak and Kosovo officials, can influence how strict the Kosovar authorities are when it comes to demanding the PPP contract’s implementation.
For example, Ejupi explains that the missing second generator was first identified in an ANSA inspection in 2014,[4] two years before the electricity blackouts started to happen and two years before he got in the job.
“That inspection report was especially commissioned in order to identify what are the outstanding works that Limak need to finish before handing over with the completed (Air Traffic Control) as the PPP envisages” said Ejupi.
BIRN got access to two ANSA inspection reports, one draft produced in February 2014 and the final one in September 2014 where this matter is indeed ‘closed.’
While the initial ANSA inspection identifies the missing generator, the final draft of the report produced six months later considers the matter “closed” without explanation.
“The matter is “closed” but in the meantime Limak employs several relatives of Kosovo’s people-in-power , including the brother of the ANSA Director” adds Ejupi.
Shileku described how the decision not to insist on getting the second generator, came back to haunt the airport staff in 2016.
“On 16th of August 2016, three hours before Joe Biden, US Vice president is due to visit Kosovo, we have a power failure which is marked as a serious incident,” said Shileku.
When Shileku started investigating and requesting a risk assessment, Driton Mehaj, the head of the technical team told him that ANSA relied on a manual generator owned by Limak. The generator needs several minutes to be turned on.
“This worried me to death, minutes in aviation are not something you should take lightly,” Shileku said.
Driton Gjonbalaj, head of the Kosovo Civilian Aviation Authority, CAA, which certified ANSA without the controversial back up generator claims that blackouts are common in aviation industry.
“Let me illustrate, there was a complete blackout in Atlanta [USA] a few weeks ago and hundreds of flights remained in the air...same happened in Croatia few years ago, a complete blackout, in which case the nearest airport, in this case Serbia, managed the flights until power was back on,” said Gjonbalaj for Jeta ne Kosove interview in early 2018.