In 2023, Edi Rama flew by charter for a secret visit to Israel. The destination was the private Sanilevich Winery Estate residence in Newe Yarak, where the Albanian Prime Minister was invited by the owner and his close friend, Saniel Sanilevich.
Appointed as Albania’s honorary consul in Israel by former Foreign Minister Olta Xhaçka, Mr. Sanilevich has been seen frequently in meetings with the Albanian Prime Minister in recent years. In these meetings, many business projects have apparently been discussed, some of which have begun to materialize.
Sanilevich is currently a shareholder in Albania’s first digital bank and is also rumored to be investing in the construction of resorts on the coast. But while his business interests in Albania are rapidly expanding thanks to his close friendship with the prime minister, healthcare has not been left out of his projects.
In Albania, these were secret plans, but everything was revealed two months ago by the Israeli media.
The latter owns several hospitals in Equatorial Guinea. She and Sanilevich realized that Albania, like African countries, is a country whose healthcare system is desperate for investment.
Yardena Ovadia
The Albanian healthcare business projects did not arise out of nowhere. In Israel, Sanilevich heads the financial arm of the Hadassah Health Center, which owns two University hospitals in Jerusalem. This was the reason why the Israeli media exposed Sanilevich’s projects to do healthcare business in Albania, which according to them constituted a clear conflict of interest.
But although in Israel the healthcare service is at the forefront, in Albania, beyond backwardness and lack of funding, the healthcare system is systematically threatened by corruption and predatory projects.
Three days ago, Kapitali exposed a government initiative to privatize healthcare tenders, through the creation of a joint public-private company. This company will have a monopoly on the purchase of medicines, medical equipment and all other public healthcare services.
The initiative is an identical replication of the Kayo model in the health sector and practically privatizes the public budget of the most priority sector. But the coincidences between what happened with defense and what is being cooked up with health may not stop at the model alone.
Kayo’s main partner today, the man who has privatized a large chunk of defense tenders, is an Israeli with Albanian citizenship, named Ron Yeffet, also a very close friend of Edi Rama.
Even a few days ago, Ervin Salianji suggested that Yeffet could be behind the initiative to privatize healthcare tenders.
However, the question remains: Will it once again be one, or more precisely two Israelis, the people who will privatize healthcare tenders in Albania?
So far this remains a mere guess, although not a very bold one. There are many signs pointing towards this scenario.
After privatizing Albania’s public assets to his Albanian friends, Edi Rama is apparently discovering a new love. Privatizing the state budget to his Jewish friends. /Kapitali.al