From a routine procedure for the maintenance of the digital television network, the multi-million tender of the Albanian Radio Television has become an emblem of big question marks, institutional clashes and decisions that smell of behind-the-scenes. On paper, it is a four-year tender with a limited fund of 906.9 million lek, or about 9.8 million euros, for the maintenance of the DVB-T2 network. In reality, the events that have unfolded since March 2025 resemble a predetermined scenario where the competition ended in a financial monologue at the expense of Albanian taxpayers.
The saga began under the leadership of the former acting director, Aurora Polo, and continued with fierce administrative clashes between the RTSH, the Public Procurement Commission and private operators. But the point where the process finally lost the shadow of transparency is related to the decision-making of the new management of the institution, when Eni Vasili came to the helm.
Three operator mergers entered the competition, but the playing field was quickly cleared. Two of the rivals were disqualified, leaving only one competitor in the competition, the merger of the operators “IDEA - TEL” and “REAL COM”. What raises strong administrative and ethical questions is the offer with which they were declared the winner, which amounted to 99.1% of the limit fund. When a multi-million tender remains with only one competitor and the winner gets the maximum price of the limit fund, here we have a shadow of suspicion of a predetermined winner.
The biggest question hanging over this procedure is why the most economical bid in the competition was eliminated. The merger of the operators "R&T" and "TBS 96" had entered the competition with a bid about 1 million euros lower than the limit fund, which would have constituted a considerable saving for the state budget.
However, instead of evaluating this offer, a barrage of accusations began against them that ended not only with disqualification, but with exclusion for one year from any public procurement procedure. The criteria set at the outset by RTSH showed the first signs of anomalies, as the institution requested prior authorizations from international manufacturers of technological equipment. This request conflicted with the recommendations of the Supreme State Audit Office for avoiding bureaucratic obstacles in procurement, but despite this, the two companies presented the necessary authorizations from the German company “PLISCH” and the Chinese distributor “Xiamen General Electronic Measurement”.
The absurdity of this process deepened when RTSH launched a full-scale attack on the two companies on the claim that the authorization from the Chinese distributor was false. To prove this, RTSH did not communicate with the headquarters of the German company “Rohde & Schwarz” in Munich, but with its branch in Vienna, which stated that it had granted the rights only to the other winning company.
Incomprehensibly, the contracting authority chose to completely ignore the second official authorization that the two companies had presented by the Germans of “PLISCH”, not verifying it at all. The irony reaches its peak when the Chinese company itself officially sent a letter confirming that the authorization issued in April was 100% authentic and legitimate, while the subsequent revocation came only for issues of territorial jurisdiction and not because the document was forged.
The final blow did not come from RTSH, but from the Public Procurement Agency, which made an arbitrary decision excluding the companies "R&T" and "TBS 96" for one year from all public tenders.
This punishment was imposed without any independent investigation or neutral secondary verification by the Chinese company, relying only on the allegations of RTSH and ignoring the evidence submitted by the companies themselves. What is more serious is that the decision was published online without any official notification to the affected entities.
With a drop of a pen, a bureaucratic decision based on one-sided interpretations not only awarded the 9.8 million euro tender to the most expensive bid, the facts show only one thing: there was no competition, but the money was all given.
