How to Steal €1.1 Million from the Albanian Cultural Scene
On February 10, 2025, Mayor of Tirana Erion Veliaj was arrested on charges of corruption and money laundering. Together with his wife Ajola Xoxa, a lawyer and self-declared “curator,” as well as six major construction company owners, Veliaj has been implicated in a vast and complex scheme to launder public funds and kickbacks from contractors through a series of non-profit arts organizations and private companies nominally managed by family Xoxa’s and Veliaj’s family members.
Different from previous notable corruption cases, such as against former President Ilir Meta and former Minister of Environment Lefter Koka, the dossier concerning the corrupt affairs of the Veliaj–Xoxa couple is based on a detailed analysis of their private assets and expenditures, animated by a simple question: considering their relatively modest reported income, how could they afford their clearly affluent lifestyle? In previous dossiers, this question had not been raised this explicitly, and I believe this forensic accounting approach provides a fertile blueprint for future investigations of high government officials.
The initial impetus for the investigation was a tip sent to the Special Structure against Corruption and Organized Crime (SPAK) in July 2023, where a certain Nesti Angoni (which turns out to be a pseudonym of an as yet unidentified individual) raised questions about Veliaj and Xoxa’s residence in the Tirana neighborhood of Kodra e Diellit and three sea-side holiday villas in Qerret, all acquired from the construction company AGI KONS, owned by Gentian Sula. Sula’s wife Gentiana had been deputy minister under Veliaj at the Ministry of Social Welfare and Youth, and later, when Veliaj had become Mayor of Tirana in 2015, AGI KONS had received multiple lucrative building permits. The basic questions that followed from these facts were how Veliaj and Xoxa could have afforded these properties, and if not, under which conditions they were transferred into their ownership by AGI KONS.
The prosecution subsequently provides a detailed analysis of the finances of the couple between 2013 and 2023, showing that there is no evidence of the acquisition of the holiday villas, which in fact turn out to be registered in the name of their family members. Evidence from telecommunications, cell phone location data, witness testimonies, and a search of the property, however, convincingly show that Veliaj and Xoxa are the actual owners and managers of one of the villas, and that they had failed to legally declare it.1
Using their discretionary access to employment records, customs data, public procurement records, and tax records, SPAK prosecutors further show charter airplane trips of Veliaj and Gentian Sula and an extensive list of large-scale tenders granted to AGI KONS, including for the renovation of Parku Rinia, the Theater of Tirana, the Theater of Opera and Ballet, concessions for the construction of schools, and so on. A number of these tenders were granted under suspicious circumstances, and in several cases AGI KONS was granted contracts for both construction and supervision, in clear violation of the law. Yet all of these contracts were approved and signed by Veliaj. In particular, the prosecutors point to the curious coincidence of the administration fees that Veliaj started paying for the villa in Qerret in August 2020, and AGI KONS’s contract to build a school to the tune of nearly 363 million lekë (~€3.6 million) a month later, suggesting that the use of the villas had been exchanged for the granting of the tender.
But the detailed forensic accounting of the investigators showed that the real estate kickbacks from AGI KONS were only the tip of the iceberg.
The dossier assembled by SPAK details a sprawling network of non-profit arts organizations and companies nominally owned or directed by Xoxa’s family members, but in reality under her direct control. All of them show extensive revenue coming from the Municipality of Tirana, the Ministries of Culture and Tourism, nonprofits funded by the municipality, and construction companies, as well as countless invoices – often for services never delivered – between them in order to justify expenses that in reality end up in the private pockets of Xoxa and Veliaj.
This includes Xoxa’s private law firm The Partners Law, which employs the lawyers that figure as a rotating cast of administrators and treasurers for the other legal entities; the foundation Harabel, nominally under directorship of artist Driant Zeneli but in reality fully managed by Xoxa2; the commercial gallery NAAN, 100% of the shares of which were donated by Zeneli to Harabel and which operates a villa in the fancy Bllok area 25% owned by Sula; and a handful of other ad-hoc nonprofits and companies apparently established with the sole purpose of channeling public money and construction kickbacks to Veliaj and his wife.
Featured in the dossier is one of the most prominent contractors in Albania, Fusha shpk. In one episode, two lawyers employed by The Partners Law channel about €13,000 from Fusha to Harabel only a few days after Fusha receives part of the municipal funds for the renovation of Skënderbeg Square, a project that has cost the Albanian public by now nearly €19 million through a series of highly suspect tenders. Through the same fictional invoices, Fusha also directly pays one of the lawyers at The Partners Law, basically covering their salary for several months.
Besides monetary kickbacks from construction companies, the network set up and managed by Xoxa also circulates an endless stream of fake invoices3 to justify the public funds received from the municipality and ministries. For example, Harabel pays “rent” to Xoxa even though its offices are in the same space as The Partners Law in Sky Tower. In another episode, Sokol Kryeziu, a former street sweeper-turned-owner of construction company Gerard-A, pays around €50,000 for a series of paintings by Idlir Koka from NAAN Gallery, while Koka receives only €13,000. The rest disappears. An Italian curator, Domenico de Chirico, provides a fake invoice of €1,000 for curating Koka’s show, while Xoxa’s own credits as “curator” of several shows at NAAN Gallery also appear to be fake and mainly reflect further funds flowing from the nonprofit Harabel into her own pocket.
The entities directed by Xoxa are also constantly involved in artistic fields and productions they have no professional capacities to manage. In a typical example, Harabel receives funds from the Ministry of Culture to organize the 2023 International Contemporary Dance Festival in Tirana, despite having no one on staff with knowledge of contemporary dance. For this festival, the nonprofit Eventus (Xoxa’s uncle’s wife) invoiced €20,309 for musical composition, while Balkan Youth Link, also controlled by Xoxa, invoiced €19,071 for choreography – in both cases without any verifiable experience in these respective artistic disciplines.
This particular dance festival also features the complex involvement of construction company Rametal,4 which directly pays a €8,326 invoice for the international transport of the dance performance Sonoma, even though the Municipality of Tirana has already provided Balkan Youth Link 5 million lekë (~€50,000) for the production. At the same time, the Theater of Opera and Ballet signs an equipment rental contract with Rametal for about €19,000 for the same production, money which eventually flows back to companies controlled by Xoxa. Meanwhile, the funds accorded by the Ministry of Culture to this festival – which are actually supposed to cover transportation and equipment costs – also end up in Xoxa’s pockets through a series of fake invoices.
At some point, there are so many legal entities and so many projects that the staff of The Partners Law managing the administration make frequent mistakes with budgets, stamps, and letterheads, mixing up one nonprofit with the other. In one instance of administrative chaos, Zeneli is the main actor in a game of “musical invoices” between Ava Studio (Xoxa’s mother), Arts Lab (Xoxa’s uncle), and Harabel, where payments and counterpayments are made until the “right” legal entity is charged for fictional video editing costs, making sure that all accounts “zero out” at the end of the year.
Also Gogël, a company owned by Veliaj’s brother, Arbër, is involved in these schemes. Telecommunications company One Albania has won several lucrative tenders from the Municipality of Tirana and at the same time is one of the main clients of Gogël, to the tune of about €5.5 million as of June 2024, of which it funnels, in turn, more than €50,000 to Ava Studio, a company on paper managed by Xoxa’s mother but in reality fully under Ajola Xoxa’s control.
The examples mentioned above are only a very limited selection. All in all, SPAK alleges, Xoxa manages to capture about 110 million lekë (~€1.1 million), of which nearly €870,000 is spent on luxury clothing, beauty products, and jewelry, imported using the ID card of the former executive director of Balkans Youth Link, who turned out to be fully unaware he had been shopping for Louis Vuitton bags.
However, the dossier also leaves a number of unresolved questions. First of all, the connections with the Ministries of Culture and Tourism remain unclarified. Was there the same mechanism at play as with the Municipality of Tirana? Then, Xoxa was also founder of the GurGur Gallery in Petrela, where Harabel has organized a series of exhibitions of Albanian artists. Again, the financial and ownership arrangements remain unclear, as well as what the owners of the space may have received in return for granting the space to Harabel.
And finally, even though a number of businessmen mentioned in the dossier, including relatively prominent ones such as Shkëlqim Fusha, have been indicted for active corruption, one particular oligarch remains untouched despite multiple references: Samir Mane, who also recently appeared in former President Meta’s corruption dossier. Nonetheless, the Mane Foundation was one of the major donors to Harabel with a contribution of €40,000, while the Mane Foundation’s Gocat Gallery opened last year with a solo exhibition of Harabel’s executive director Zeneli, curated by Xoxa. Gocat publicly claimed to be “free for visitors and free for artists,” begging the question how its activities are financed and how it covers the rent for its prime location in the Pyramid, which is property of the Municipality of Tirana. Furthermore, Mane’s Balfin group is mentioned as donor of €30,000 to Arts Lab as well as Balkan Youth Link, both entities under Xoxa’s control.
Yet, the figure of €1.1 million stolen from the Albanian public is only one side of the coin. Throughout the dossier, it becomes clear that the cultural projects that Xoxa and the multitude of legal entities under her control acquired from her husband were utterly mismanaged, with Xoxa seeking to extract a maximum of personal profit while delivering a minimally acceptable product. No one appears to be hired based on their actual qualifications and the selection of collaborators is clearly made on the basis of a willingness to abide by less than scrupulous payment procedures, creative invoicing, cash payments, and so on.
The damage this has wrought on the Albanian cultural scene is difficult to overstate. Since its registration in 2018, Harabel has sucked up hundreds of thousands of euros from the local and national Albanian government, as well as foreign cultural funds from Italy, Switzerland, the USA, and the EU. None of this funding was well spent, none of it was properly accounted for, and all of it could have been used so much better by an independent cultural scene starving for some form of public support – from a government led, nota bene, by someone who calls himself an artist.
And it is not only the misappropriated funds, the money wasted on fake invoices and half-baked project execution. As a result of its dominance in cultural production in Tirana, Xoxa’s criminal enterprise has also tainted many of the cultural producers who for one reason or another felt called – despite early warnings that Xoxa’s astroturf initiatives were likely less than fully legal – to accept her commissions, exhibit in her spaces, or work for her organizations.
First of all, we should highlight those who provided the much needed artistic legitimacy to Harabel’s existence: well-known artists and curators with established international careers such as Anri Sala, Adrian Paci, Sislej Xhafa, and Edi Muka. One cannot underestimate – especially within a prestige-driven environment that is the art world – the importance of their support for Harabel’s mission and Xoxa’s nascent curatorial career. As of today, none of them has released a statement distancing themselves from Xoxa or Harabel. To call them compromised would be too kind.
And how about some accountability from Harabel’s board members, which, besides Zeneli and Sala, comprise Olsi Efthimi (also the architect of the villa in Qerret), Zef Paci, Ema Andrea, Tomasso Sacchi, Alicia Knock, Eroll Bilibani, Marco Scotini, and Tea Çuni?5 Have they resigned yet, in the light of the criminal enterprise they appear to have overseen and legitimized?
And finally, what about all those international curators, artists, and lecturers? How were all of them paid? Who paid for their hotels and flights? And the dozens of Albanian cultural workers who were involved in Xoxa’s projects: Did they send in fake invoices? Were they robbed of most of the value of their work? Were they victims of Xoxa’s quasi-monopoly on public funding? Were they willing to be “morally flexible,” betting on her rising status in the Albanian art world? Or were they fully complicit and supportive of her stranglehold on cultural life, seeing working with her as good career move?
The answers to these questions are no doubt complicated, emotionally charged, and embedded in a political landscape where artistic and cultural production operate in the looming shadow of the cultural producer-in-chief. But answers will need to be formulated if the Albanian art scene is to develop and move forward. To ignore the extensive crimes of Erion Veliaj and Ajola Xoxa, and the damage they have wrought on an entire cultural community, would be a grave mistake.
The Albanian Mechanism is part of Manifesto GREAT WAVE.
The second villa is in possession of Veliaj’s brother Arbër. The third villa was destroyed to create more open space, using municipal equipment.
Throughout the dossier, the prosecutors take pains to emphasize Zeneli’s “total ignorance” despite his position as executive director of Harabel. The prosecutors speak about the “total bypassing” of Zeneli, as Xoxa orders that he is under no circumstances allowed to deal with the cash payments to Harabel. Zeneli is not even in charge of routine payments such as Harabel’s internet subscription. The dossier relates a particular instance where he asked for the payment of an invoice, but “Ajola needs to be asked and she’s told him no.” But in her own testimony, Xoxa tries to hide behind Zeneli, portraying as the final decision maker and director of Harabel, contradicting every other piece of evidence assembled by the prosecution.
At the same time, we should be careful not to strip Zeneli of any agency whatsoever. Besides executive director, he was also on the board of Harabel. On his own accord, he transferred 100% of the ownership of NAAN Gallery to Harabel and he continued to represent Harabel on most contracts despite the clearly fictitious nature of most of the paperwork. And even though he was closely familiar with Xoxa’s illegal dealings, he agreed to be reconfirmed as Harabel’s executive director in May 2024, half a year later assaulting the present author for reporting precisely on his involvement in Harabel. And all of this, he claims in his extensive witness statement, “to strengthen his CV.”
After Veliaj’s arrest, Prime Minister Edi Rama publicly defended Zeneli, albeit without naming him directly: “There is someone who was summoned, I don’t know why. Because of his cultural activities. How can they someone take from the streets a father who is bringing his child in a stroller to the kindergarten? […] How can they pick a parent with a three-year-old child in a stroller from the street and say ‘Come with us,’ in the morning. How can they point through the window and tell him, ‘Do you see that building? Do you know what that is?’ How would he know? He is teacher, a man of the arts that has honored Albania. How would he know? ‘That’s prison’ they tell him. ‘You may end up there. Think about your three-year-old son.’ What is the use of this?” Needless to say, SPAK made Zeneli sing like a birdie.
Not without a sense of humor, the prosecutors speak at some point about a “‘saga’ of legal consultancy.”
Rametal, owned by Elman Abule, was seized by the Prosecution Office in 2024 as part of a separate sprawling money laundering investigation. Over three years, Abule transferred around €200,000 to companies controlled by Xoxa.
Despite them being listed on the website of Harabel, Xoxa claims in her testimony that “she is unclear about who is on the board, because they are in the process of changing board members. […] The aim is that Driant [Zeneli] become head of the board, while she becomes executive director.”