Pleurad Xhafa, Loti 3, 2019
In September 2018, the government announced its plans for a €40 million investment for the reconstruction of a 2.2 km road segment, part of Tirana’s Outer Ring Road. The bidding procedure, which was announced soon after, split this segment into three lots. Two construction companies entered the tender for each lot, but one of them did not actually bid, making the other company the predetermined winner.v.
The reconstruction project demands the demolition of 317 properties in the area, the majority being informal constructions built over the last three decades. During this period, citizens from all over Albania decided to settle in the area, also known as “Astir”, building their homes and family businesses along the roadside. The same thing has happened in virtually every suburb of Tirana.
This situation is well known both to the government and the local authorities that regularly collect taxes and contributions from the inhabitants. Of course, before every election, all political parties have promised these people the legalization of their properties. The same promises were made by the ruling Socialist Party in 2013 and again in 2017, until the government dispatched the authorities to mark the buildings slated for demolition with an “X”, spray painted on the outside doors in blood red.
Furious about this deception, the inhabitants staged protests, blocking the streets and confronting the police. As an act of revenge, they used black spray paint to scribble across the sign depicting the winning project for the reconstruction of the road. However, these actions did not stop the government from making the lives of the inhabitants even more difficult. First, they cut the trees; then they removed the light posts; in the end, they cut off both electricity and the water supply in the area.
In the midst of this conflict, the media revealed a scandal involving one of the tender winners, DH Albania Ltd. Registered as an offshore company in Delaware, USA, it transpired that DH Albania Ltd had falsified virtually all of the paperwork included in their application. The company wasn't founded in 1998 as previously claimed, but rather two months before the tender, making its financial balances nonexistent. Among other documents, the company had filed a reference letter from the Secretary of State of Delaware, Jeffrey W. Bullock, whose signature was also falsified. The case caught the FBI's attention, which immediately launched an investigation, causing the Albanian government and the General Persecutor’s Office to suspend the work.
If you cross this road segment, you will face deep darkness; concrete barriers; cut trees trunks and the project site sign “Lot 3”, where the scrawl made by the inhabitants indicates their rejection of this corrupt scheme. At the same time, this scribble, transformed into a sign, appears as a zone of possible actions in which the project site sign no longer shows a plan but rather an event.