Although the 15 million euro tender conducted by the Ministry of Defense is classified at the highest level of confidentiality, Kapital has obtained official documents that raise suspicions of a major scandal.
Secret tender
The winning company, which will deliver the three aircraft and provide maintenance services for them for three years, is called Air Tractor SRL. This is a Spanish company, which has the right to market American Air Tractor aircraft in Europe.
But there is a problem. She has been convicted by the Spanish Court of corruption, bid-rigging and cartel for more than 20 years in manipulating tenders for firefighting aircraft, in what is otherwise known as the Fire Cartel. An activity that, according to the Court, has caused corrupt damage of over 150 million euros in Spain alone.
The sentence
Air Tractor Europe is owned by a Spanish citizen named Vincente Huerta. This person owns a large group of companies, directly or indirectly, which have often changed names after numerous scandals. But the hand that controls them always remains the same: Huerta.
Previously, Air Tractor was called Avialsa-T. But after a corruption scandal in 2014, the company decided to change its board members as well as its name, becoming Air Tractpr Europe SRL. However, the illegal practices did not stop, despite the change of skin.
In February last year, Spain’s National Criminal Court delivered the first verdict in one of the most sensational corruption cases in Spain.
This is a criminal activity in the manipulation of tenders for the purchase of firefighting aircraft, which, according to court documents, is centered on the Air Tractor Europa group of companies and has lasted for more than 20 years.
Sentence by the Spanish court
The Spanish prosecutor’s office presented documents showing that this group of companies fixed tenders for the purchase of aircraft, not only in Spain, but also in many other European countries, including Italy, Portugal, France and, most recently, Cyprus.
As a result, the court decided to sentence the former company executives to prison and to ban Air Tractor and Titan Firefighting (both group companies) from participating in tenders for 9 months.
The only manager who was declared exonerated was Francisco Alandia, who cooperated with justice by telling the authorities all the illegal activities of the companies. The case has been appealed and this process is still ongoing at the highest levels.
The Supreme Court of Greece
In 2024, the Greek Ministry of Civil Protection opened a tender of 154.8 million euros to purchase 25 firefighting aircraft. Two companies, EFA and Air Tractor, again participated in the tender. The Greek government declared Air Tractor the winner. But the process was appealed and was only made official in May of last year.
The standard tender procedure in the European Union requires companies to fill out a form, otherwise known as a solemn declaration, where they declare that they have no grounds for exclusion from tenders, meaning practically that they have no convictions from the courts.
Air Tractor and Titan submitted the declaration in June 2025, solemnly declaring that neither of them had been convicted and had no grounds for exclusion. But their rival, the Greek company EFA, submitted to the ministry the Spanish court decision of February 2025, where both Air Tractor and Titan had been convicted.
The matter entered the court process again and in March of this year, the Supreme Court of Greece declared Air Tractor Europa’s bid inadmissible, canceling the tender.
The decision of the Greek Supreme Court
This decision practically makes it impossible for the company to enter European Union public tenders.
Two decades of convictions and fraud
The real owner of Air Tractor Europa is a Spanish citizen named Vincente Huerta. Huerta currently has several convictions in a series of trials in Spanish courts for bid-rigging, document falsification and bribery.
Huerta was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for the fire cartel case. He initially faced a sentence of 25 years for this offense.
At that time Huerta was tried together with the former Minister of the Interior of Valencia, Serafín Castellano, whom Huerta bribed with gifts worth €167,177.02. Their plea agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office, in exchange for reduced sentences, included a joint payment of approximately €904,000 in compensation to the affected public administrations.
Previously, Huerta also had to pay a fine of around €649,800 after admitting in 2023 before the Criminal Court No. 4 of Valencia that he had defrauded the tax authorities from 2009 to 2014 (excluding 2013) through several of his companies and in personal income tax, committing nine criminal offenses against the Public Treasury and one count of forgery of documents.
Also in 2020, along with three other defendants, he pleaded guilty to a crime for prohibited negotiations and irregularities in the Viver aerodrome project and paid a fine of 900 euros that prevented him from holding the first trial of the Avialsa case.
But the most sensational trial against him is underway. The Anti-Corruption Prosecution is now seeking another 7 years in prison for him, for the ‘continuous’ criminal offenses of passive corruption and falsification of commercial and private documents./ Kapitali.al