The World Bank debarred an Albanian company for three years from its projects after finding it had engaged in illegal practices and threatened to ask an alliance of international banks to debar it from their projects, the World Bank said on Friday.

“The World Bank Sanctions Board debarred “Elkri” for three years for engaging fraudulent practices in a Bank-financed project in Albania. The debarment may be reduced to two years upon implementation of an effective corporate compliance program,” the Bank said in a statement from Washington released in Tirana.

Elkri, a construction company from the southern town of Sarande, had applied to work as a subcontractor in works related to the Municipal Water and Wastewater projects in the cities of Durres, Fier, Lezhe and Saranda.

The World Bank said Elkri engaged in fraudulent practices during the bidding process but did not sign a contract for a minor works contract to build an office for the wastewater authority in 2008, World Bank documents showed.

Saying it was taking anti-corruption enforcement to a new level, the World Bank Group also debarred a U.S.-based company along with Albania’s Elkri and, separately, announced the first-ever World Bank cross-debarments of firms, for engaging in corrupt and fraudulent practices in development projects.

Kwaplah International Trading Co. Inc., a U.S.-based company, and its owner, Sherlock Mahn, together with any organization they directly or indirectly control, have been debarred for 12 years for engaging in corrupt and fraudulent practices in bank-financed projects implemented in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Ghana, Gambia and Liberia.

“These enforcement actions are timely, coming as they do just before our meeting next week with the International Corruption Hunters Alliance. Our hope is that the Alliance will facilitate our investigations and increase their impact to further eliminate fraud and corruption risks impacting development resources,” said Leonard McCarthy, World Bank Vice President for Integrity (INT).

“An important item on our agenda is stepping up enforcement action as part of a global enforcement regime. These are examples of cases that could be scaled up with the support of Alliance members given the network’s multi-jurisdictional impact,” he said.

These two and other companies are eligible for cross debarment by the African Development Bank Group, Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the World Bank Group and the Inter-American Development Bank Group.

“Under the agreement, entities debarred by one multilateral development bank (MDB) may be sanctioned for the same misconduct by other participating development banks, which translates into collective enforcement action,” the World Bank said.

Albania is fighting an uphill struggle against widespread corruption in the public sector although the Balkan nation marked an improvement of 0.1 percent in a measurement of the public perception of corruption by watchdog Transparency International.

December 03, 2010
XINHUA

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