18
October 2019
INVESTIGATION
Compensation Pending: Suspicion over Demolition of Historic Tirana Homes Authorities in the Albanian capital razed a historic neighbourhood in 2016, making room for two privately-built tower blocks. But the families who lost their homes have yet to be compensated. ESMERALDA KETA | BIRN | TIRANA
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hen thebulldozers arrived early in the morning of September 5, 2016, Jolanda Axha Nica had still to pack her belongings. Built in 1934 on Tirana’s central Dibra Street, Axha’s house was once the home of the ‘Flora’ store where Albania’s late Stalinist dictator, Enver Hoxha, sold cigarettes following the invasion of the country by fascist Italy in 1939. In 2015, the building was recognised as a Category Two heritage site by the Albanian government, but official protection meant nothing in the face of bulldozers dispatched by the Tirana municipality a year later. Axha’s house and nearly a dozen other historic homes in the heart of the capital were swept aside to make way for a road expansion and an electrical substation ‘temporarily’ relocated from the parking lot of the Tirana International Hotel, where a 33-floor tower was to bebuilt in its place as an extension to the hotel. Three years later, the owners of the demolished homes say they have received only a tiny fraction of what they are owed by the city authorities. The municipality blames the owners for failing to provide the necessary documentation; the owners, however, say they were offered compensation far below the going rate for real estate in such a prime location in the capital. Some have taken the municipality to court, but have had little joy. Campaigners suspect they have been sacrificed by the authorities for the benefit of private construction interests. Recalling the morning her home was razed, Axha said, “They just threw our clothes in a truck. I wept.” “I was born there, both my father and my grandfather were born there,” she said. “My whole life was in that house. It was old, but it was my home.”Axha spoke to BIRN in April. She died in September, aged 89. Iljaz Kellezi, the descendant of a prominent Tirana leather trader and whose family lost two houses and two plots of land, pondered: “If the relocation of the substation was provisional, how come they took our property permanently?” Judicial dead-end The Tirana municipality began expropriating the historic homes of 10 families
Planned 33 story expansion of Tirana International Hotel, in the place of relocated power substation.
Jolanda Axha Nica spoke to BIRN in April. She died on September, aged 89.
in the heart of Tirana in February 2016, when construction started on the city’s small ring road and the relocation of the substation. Forty-nine properties were expropriated, 10 of them to make way for the substation despite the fact the municipality plans to move it again to an underground site beneath a new bus station. The Kellezi family lost two plots of land and two houses, one of them a two-floor villa built in 1937 and belonging to Iljaz Kellezi. “We [the family] had two houses, one two-floor and another one-floor, with gardens, making a total of 558 square metres, but in three years we have been compensated for only 82 square metres,” said Kellezi. “We want the compensation for the rest of the expropriated property. Otherwise, this amounts to confiscation of property.” Kellezi is one of 31 heirs of Mehmet Kellezi, a famous Tirana leather trader of the 1930s and 40s. According to Kellezi, four of the homes inherited from his father were confiscated by the communist regime that ran Albania from the end of World War Two until 1990, while two others where the family lived were among those demolished by the municipality.
Besides the Kellezi family, members of the Kore, Gjerazi, Buli, Trebicka, Axha, Gadeshi and Buneci families all told BIRN that they had yet to receive any money; 18 family members have filed a lawsuit with the Administrative Court of Appeals against a government decision setting the expropriation price for their properties. “We have had three trials and not won any of them,” said Kellezi. “We have appealed all three of these decisions, but we’ve yet to hear from the Court of Appeals.” He alleged that the court felt under pressure from city authorities led by Socialist Party Mayor Erion Veliaj. Data provided to BIRN by the Tirana municipality shows that it has paid out just 0.8 per cent of the total compensation amount set by decision No. 629 of Albania’s Socialist-led government, or 6,596 euros out of a total pot of 798,494 euros. “The values left unpaid by the Municipality of Tirana are the result of documentation problems,” said Jonida Haliti, General Manager of the municipality’s Financial Management department. Public interest, or private? According to the municipality, 6,105 square metres of land was expropriated in 2016 for the construction of the ring road
and another 1,495 sqm for the relocation of the substation. The road diverts traffic from Tirana’s central Skanderbeg Square, pedestrianised two years ago by the ruling Socialists. The removal of the substation from the parking lot of the 15-floor Hotel Tirana International cleared the way for the owners to build a new 33-floor tower, the permit for which was approved by the National Territorial Council in April 2017. The substation will eventually be moved underground, below a bus station to be built behind the Palace of Culture on Skanderbeg Square. In June 2018, another building permit was issued for a 25-floor tower, ‘Tirana Rock’, adjacent to the hotel on land currently occupied by small two-floor houses and shops. Campaigners have questioned the decision to expropriate land for private construction. “The term ‘public interest’ has become elastic like a rubber band, opened and closed by officials as the need arises,” said Myrshit Vorpsi, president of an organisation called ‘Property with Justice’ and which represents Albanians whose property was confiscated under the communist regime. “This is theft aided by the law and carried out by the municipality of Tirana in the [name of] public interest,” he said. The new hotel tower, to be built by Geci Construction, will take up 75 per cent of
