From Boldnews.al
The Municipality of Vlora says it announced the company “Asi-2A Co” the winner of a 500 thousand euro tender for the reconstruction of the 9-year school “Avni Rustemi”, tolerating some deviations from the qualifying criteria. ” The deviations were considered minor and had no impact on the implementation of the contract. We declared it the winner, assessing that the other qualified operator had a higher offer .”
The argument, although not very legal, could be acceptable from an economic point of view. However, the Supreme State Audit Office found that for the same “ minor deviations ”, some of the companies participating in the competition held in 2023 were disqualified.
Here, the story takes a different turn. What seemed like a maneuver by the Municipality, led at the time by Ermal Dredha, could have been a mechanism to hand over the contract to a “favorite” company.
At the moment, it is not clear whether the KLSH has filed a criminal complaint for “violation of equality in tenders”. However, what is known so far is that the winning company of that tender, “Asi-2A Co”, owned by twins Astrit and Andrea Gjikondaj, has been excluded from tenders for 12 months.
On the last day of July, the Public Procurement Agency (APP) approved decision no. 41, with the object “ Exclusion of the entity Asi-2A Co for 12 months from participation in public tenders, due to having provided misinformation for qualification purposes in the tender with the object ‘Reconstruction of the ‘Avni Rustemi’ school”, Vlora, with a limit fund of 53,389,166 lekë ”.
The Public Procurement Agency says it launched an administrative investigation into this case, after the case was referred by the Supreme State Audit Office.
“Disputed” tender
In early March 2023, Dritan Leli, in his last days as mayor of Vlora before resigning, established the working group that would deal with the tender for the reconstruction of the 9-year school, “Avni Rustemi”.
With his departure, this procedure, as well as many other tasks of the local institution, were continued by Ermal Dredha, the former ambassador who was appointed by Prime Minister Edi Rama as the man who would lead the municipality.
The tender was announced on November 6, 2023. At the end of the deadline for submitting bids, on November 22 of that year, 6 economic operators submitted bids. Three of them were disqualified for “failure to meet specific criteria.”
In the end, the winner was announced as the company “Asi-2A Co” of the Gjikondaj brothers, in collaboration with “Viscons Group”, with an economic bid of 39.9 million new lekë.
In 2025, the Supreme State Audit conducted a Financial Audit procedure in the Municipality of Vlora. Among the verified documents was the tender procedure for the reconstruction of the “Avni Rustemi” school.
Tender violations
The Supreme State Audit Office says that, from the verification of the documentation, it results that the Bid Evaluation Commission has carried out unjustified actions, creating several factual situations, which concluded with the winning of the tender by the merger of the operators “Asi-2A Co” and “Viscons”.
Among the violations found, the SAI has particularly highlighted one of them.
The company “Asi-2A Co”, which led the winning consortium of operators, had declared that it had at its disposal the necessary means and the technical manager, who would be engaged exclusively for this procedure, to implement the contract for the reconstruction of the “Avni Rustemi” school.
But, as the KSHA found, the technical director and some assets were involved in the implementation of other projects, which did not allow them to engage in the implementation of the contract.
According to the auditors of the Supreme State Audit Office, this situation placed the company in the conditions of “false declaration” and was penalized by Article 76 of the Public Procurement Law.
Following this finding, the SAI requested clarification from the Municipality of Vlora. The local institution says in a response to the state auditors that they do not see any problem in this situation.
” Regarding your finding on the unfair qualification of the economic operator declared the winner, we clarify that, in order not to continue with the second operator, which has a higher bid, we judged that the deficiencies found could be considered as minor deviations without impact on the implementation of the contract. Thus, in the case of similar works that have been submitted with a value of 1,5,96 thousand lek less, we judged that since the object and the items of the works are similar, an EO with a bid of 2.9 million lek should not be selected .”
The argument offered by the Municipality of Vlora was not taken into consideration by the SAI, which referred the case of the company ‘Asi-2A Co’ to the Public Procurement Agency to take the necessary administrative measures for “false declaration”.
Based on this information, the Public Procurement Agency conducted its verifications and decided to exclude the Gjikondaj brothers’ company for 1 year from participating in public tenders.