Press Baron Scrimped on Restoring KLA Cemetery

The company placed in charge of renovating the KLA “martyrs’ cemetery” in Mitrovica cut more than 10 per cent off the cost price of the project by using inferior materials and by not finishing all the work.

An auditor’s report shows that ADA Consulting Group, owned by Avni Krastrati, who holds the majority of shares in Infopress, a newspaper close to the governing Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, saved at least 18,000 euro of the contract price of 170,000 euro.

Despite this, the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning, which commissioned the work in September 2009, signed off the project, saying it had been executed according to the contract and paid the full 170,000 euro.  
The report by the Office of Auditor General of Kosovo, OAG, released last summer, said corners were cut in the construction work.

“The OAG audit team, along with the chairman of the committee for technical acceptance, assigned by the ministry, carried out physical examination to verify whether the works were carried out in accordance with the contract. The works were not carried out as required,” the report said.

The auditor’s office added that the failure of the ministry to ensure that the project was completed properly meant that public funds had been wasted.

According to the report, 400 metres of kerb were missing and the firm laid just 1,296 metres of stones to build the drains rather than the 3,000 metres required. It used smaller stones than those specified. The auditors estimated that the use of fewer stones alone saved the firm about 18,000 euro.

The contractors also laid concrete paving blocks on the paths rather than asphalt, as specified in the contract. According to the auditors, this would have further lowered the costs.

Documents from Kosovo’s Business Registry, which Balkan Insight has obtained, reveal that ADA’s owner is also the majority shareholder in Infopress.

The newspaper has close links to former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA. A minority shareholder in the company is the former PDK assembly member, Rexhep Hoti.

Kastrati told Balkan Insight that the auditors’ assessment was inaccurate.  The report’s cost-cutting claims were “not true,” he said. “Talk to my technical director.”

The firm’s technical director, Shpetim Musliu, admitted that they had not followed all the specifications set out in the contract.

But he maintained that they had not profited from the changes because of cost overruns in other areas.
“We were forced to put down more gravel than we were supposed to do,” Musliu said. They had also used more expensive light bulbs than those defined in the contract.

“We were working in bad weather and there was a lot of mud around, which cost the company a lot,” he added.
However, changes to specifications require prior agreement from the contracting authority, which the company did not secure.

The ministry’s certificate of acceptance of the works, dated December 16, 2009, signed by the officials from the ministry, Musliu and the supervising company H&B Consulting, states that the firm executed all works as described by the contract.

“After detailed control, the [evaluation] committee stated that the project has ended in accordance with the drawings and technical specifications of the tender dossier,” the certificate, obtained by Balkan Insight under Freedom of Information rules, reads.

The auditor’s report states that a member of the ministry’s evaluation committee was present at the auditor’s visit to the site, which uncovered the irregularities.

Adnan Elshani, an official from the ministry and a member of the evaluation committee, did not confirm or deny that the company had not carried out the works according to the contract.

Elshani said he was aware of the auditor’s remarks but added that he was in charge of so many other works that he did not recall the details of the cemetery project.