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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.

When 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 ESMERALDA KETA | BIRN | TIRANA

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 Planned 33 story expansion of Tirana International Hotel, in the place of relocated power substation.

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

“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?”

the plot, while the Tirana Rock will occupy 95 per cent, a record for construction density, according to urban planners.

Former city councilman and urban planning professor Besnik Aliaj said that such a high coefficient, though not illegal, comes at the expense of public space.

“The developermay want to use 100 per cent of the plot, but that is why we have urban development and planning policies,” Aliaj said. “In this case, no one is asking how to create public spaces, but how to take advantage of public spaces.”

Aliaj speculated that the decision to make Skanderbeg Square a pedestrian zone, a pet project of Prime Minister and former Tirana mayor Edi Rama, was motivated by private interests in the construction of lucrative tower blocks at the expense of public space.

“The square is not for the citizens, but for the benefit of those who receive these building permits, because the square serves their towers,” Aliaj said.

Vorpsi voiced similar suspicions. “If you are a landowner in Tirana and a construction firm has an interest in developing your land, usually the landowner gets 40-45 per cent of the property [being built], but if the state comes in, it’s trouble,” he said.

In terms of the ‘temporary’ relocation of the substation, he said, “the state is notdealing honestly with the owners, because it takes the land for one purpose and then changes its destination.” Vorpsi said it

Photo of demolitions of old houses in February 2016 amounted to “robbery”.

In a written statement to BIRN, the municipality said: “We would like to clarify that their demolition and expropriation was done as part of an approved public project.” The Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure said the relocation of the substation was carried out at the request of the municipality.

Glimmer of hope Bujar Kore, another of the owners, said the compensation offered was a disgrace. The municipality offered 67,000 lek, or 545 euros, per square metre of land and 10,000 lek, or 819 euros for every sqm of demolished building.

“You call that compensation? Even if the municipality gives us this, we don’t want it,” Kore told BIRN, saying that such land in the city centre was worth between 2,000 and 3,000 euros per sqm.

Kore and others say they have struck a deal with a developer to build on the land once the substation is moved to its final location under the bus station.

“Our only hope is the agreement we have with the developer,” said Mariana Buneci. “If he gets the land, we win.”

Now 79, Buneci was nostalgic for her former neighbourhood, where she recalled Christians and Muslims congregating together at the sound of the bells from the Orthodox Church.

“We had a wonderful time,” she said. “It seems incredible that they took everything from us.”

Kellezi had spent the past 30 years trying to recover all the family property accumulated by his trader ancestor but then seized by the communists after WWII.

“It’s like the communist regime in Albania has returned,” he said,“with their motto of taking property in the name of public good. But where are our rights? Should we not be compensated at least?”

Since the demolition of their home, Axha’s family has been living in rented accommodation, paying 280 euros per month.

“We received no compensation and we can barely pay the rent,” said Axha. She had also pinned her hopes on the developer.

“If that builder comes then I will die in peace,” she said, “because I will not have to see my son struggle every month for rent.”

US Embassy Threatens to Sanction ‘Corrupt’ Albanian Officials

The United States embassy in Tirana warned that it is working to sanction more Albanian officials who it alleges have been involved in “significant corruption”.

The US embassy in Tirana said on Tuesday that it is working on a blacklist of current and former officials in Albania who it considers corrupt and to be working against the interests of the United States.

“The Department of State has just started to use its authority granted by [section] 7031(c) [of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Act] against current and former Albanian corrupt officials,” the embassy warned in a video it published on Facebook.

“Current and former corrupt officials and their families risk losing the privilege of entering the US in the future,” it added.

It said that more cases were coming after three Albanian officials were previously banned from entering the US.

The embassy did not specify who it was considering adding to the list, or what sparked the move.

Section 7031(c) says that, in cases where the US Secretary of State has credible information that officials of foreign governments have been involved in significant corruption, they and their immediate family members are ineligible for entry into the United States.

The first of the three Albanians barred from entering the US under this clause was former General Prosecutor AdriatikLlalla, who was accused of being “an enemy of justice reform” which is currently being implemented in Albania to combat high-level corruption.

The second was Tom Doshi, a controversial businessman and member of the Albanian parliament since 2005. Most recently the ban was applied to VangjushDako, an Albanian socialist mayor, who was sanctioned in July 2019 “due to involvement in significant corruption”.

There are about 100 people around the world who have been barred from entering the US under Section 7031(c). Of the Balkan citizens on the list, three are Albanians, one is Romanian, one Serbian and one Bosnian.

Two former or current politicians are among them – Nikola Spiric, a member of the House of Representatives in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was sanctioned in 2018 along with his family, while in September this year, LiviuNicolaeDragnea, the former speaker of the Romanian Chamber of Deputies, was also banned. GJERGJEREBARA | BIRN | TIRANA