Heute in Tirana: Fotos
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Tiranë, vizita e sekretarit Kerry, boshatisen rrugët e kryeqytetit (foto)
Ditën e sotme, teksa mbërrin sekretari amerikan i shtetit John Kerry, Tirana është thuajse e boshatisur. Përmes disa fotove të shkrepura nga gazetari Aristir Lumezi, duken rrugët boshatisura, ndalimi...
Erinnert an die Familie Bushati, die einmal Vatican Vertraute waren, denn auch diese Banditen berufen sich auf den Vatikan.
International Catholic Migration Commission, ICMC
12 Feb 16
Kosovo NGO Lost €0.5m in Failed Bid to Become a Bank
A charitable, Kosovan microfinance lender spent
500,000 euros on consultancy and IT fees in its failed attempt to
convert to a bank.
BIRN
Pristina
KEP building in Pristina Photo by: BIRN/Atdhe Mulla |
The KEP Trust, Kosovo’s largest microfinance institution, MFI, was a lead member of a lobbyist group that campaigned for the government to introduce legislation allowing it and its peers to switch from being NGOs to privately owned companies.
As a non-governmental organisation, KEP, and other MFIs, are required to reinvest any income generated back into charitable work.
KEP was created in September 1999 in the aftermath of the Kosovo conflict to “promote marginalised groups and the disadvantaged population”.
Founded by the International Catholic Migration Commission, ICMC, a large Swiss charity, and the little-known Prizren Business club, KEP provides small loans to individuals and businesses who would struggle to secure financing from traditional banks.
In 2008, KEP, which was sitting on large amounts of capital it had accumulated through lending, decided to press the Kosovo government, embassies and financial institutions for new legislation. This would have allowed it, and other MFIs, to transform into for-profit financial institutions – such as a bank – owned by shareholders.
In preparation for the expected change, KEP went as far as creating an elaborate network of companies, including KEP Bank, which was owned by KEP Trust through a company, KEP Holding, in the notorious, US offshore jurisdiction of Delaware.
Following the change in law, the NGO’s loan book could have been sold to the newly created KEP Bank, which would have been partly owned by KEP Trust and a new, private investor.
However, according to the Central Bank of Kosovo, CBK, the naming of the company as KEP Bank breached two UNMIK regulations that were adopted in the post-conflict period when Kosovo was run by the United Nations mission.
The first regulation states that no company can use the term ‘bank’ without a licence from the CBK and the second bans all micro-credit financial institutions from using the word.
KEP building in Pristina Photo by: BIRN/Atdhe Mulla |
Eventually an administrator from the CBK was appointed to manage KEP in 2011, as part of a wider attempt to ensure effective management and prevent further damage to the NGO’s finances. Plans to convert to a bank were put on hold at this point.
When a new law - the Law on Banks, Microfinance Institutions and Non-Bank Financial Institutions – was eventually passed in April 2012 in favour of MFIs converting to profit-making institutions, other NGOs appealed to the Constitutional Court, which then blocked the legislation, deeming it “unconstitutional”.
Nuland to Visit Albania for Bilateral Discussions
[image: Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in Kiev]
01:29 11.02.2016
Link
Victoria Nuland will travel to Poland, Germany and Albania on February
10-14, where she will hold series of bilateral meetings.
[image: Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey R. Pyatt at the Maidan Square in Kiev]
© Sputnik/ Petr Zadorozhny
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland will
travel to Poland, Germany and Albania on February 10-14, where she will
hold series of bilateral meetings and attend a security conference, US
Department of State said in a press release.
"On February... mehr »
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