Armed residents Urged to Pay Tax for Former Property

Hadja is one of the villages in the Obilic municipality that belongs to the announced area of particular interest in expanding the mining activities of the Kosovo Energy Corporation, KEK. In this area are reserves of Kosovo's most important energy source, which supplies about 97 percent of total electricity production.

Praise Shala, Runzhi Mirna and St. P, there are all three Hades residents who were part of the shift project. All three are dwelling in New Hades, but in addition they have another common thing like most already displaced residents: All three residents have been asked to pay taxes even on the property they once lived in and no longer exist in their name.

NOGHORUE Shala, resident of New Hades, who is also an official of the Civil State in the Obilic municipality, told Radio Free Europe that property compensation was made in 2011, compensation made by KEK and Government of the Republic of Kosovo, where according to official Government has carried out the procedures while KEK has made the payment.

I've been paid for drilling in 2011, and in 2012 I've been charged with tax... We were out in 2012, because we were taken out of Hadya and we were like in the emergency [state] of the Obilic residence until we built the house here... Compensation was made in late 2011... For my ex-owner, for 2012, when I've been expropriated I have 38 euros in property tax left, and that debt hasn't been repaid and I don't intend to pay it at all, because I haven't lived there in 2012... All are in debt, most of which have remained Hades' debts there”, Shala said to the REL.

When asked by Radio Free Europe, KEK spokesman Skender Bucolli, on this issue, said that “should be asked in the municipality for what we do not know”.
On the other hand, the director of Urban Planning, Property and Cadastre in the Obilqi municipality, Arben Berisha, confirmed to Radio Free Europe, saying that following the initiative of the expropriation issue, they are awaiting a meeting in the Ministry of Environment, Spatial Planning and Infrastructure to move to the delivery phase.

The reality is what you're saying [the residents still pay taxes after being deported]... We've initiated this issue with the Ministry of Space Planning because they haven't brought the complete documentation of expropriation and change of owners, from private owners to owners to the Government of the Republic of Kosovo... We are waiting every time the Ministry sends us all the subjects, [then] we enter the cadastral device and make the delivery of properties”, Berisha told REL.

Explorations and displacements from these areas have been under way since 2002, they have been initiated by then-immediate institutions, and then continued by the Government of Kosovo in 2009, when it has also been declared the Zone of Special Economic Interest.

Skender Bucolli, director of the Executive Office for Public Relations, in a proposal earlier on REL had said that between 2002 and 2013, some 127 families have been evacuated from the village of Hades and 156 hectares of land have been expropriated.

Ruzhdzhi Mirena, currently resident of New Hades, told Radio Free Europe that in October 2020 they have signed contracts with KEK, the Ministry of Environment, Space Planning and Infrastructure and the Obiliki municipality, then in 2020 and the years ahead 2021 and 2022 have been asked to pay taxes, though he is already displaced.

We've gone to the municipality [we've asked] how we have signed the contract and our billing for payment has arrived. We came every year [from the year we moved] bills to pay [the fee], even though by agreement it has been to free us from all taxes”, Mirena told REL.

St. P, who moved from Hadja in 2004, and for Radio Free Europe described this situation as neglect by competent institutions.

“The lands do not exist and tax is required for... My brain is not known where it is... this is not doing their jobs. I was once, figured out the 19-euro tax, the people I've been talking to, those people [have said] that it figures out their tax on property“, said Hades resident of REL.

According to a research conducted by the World Bank's Survey Panel in 2016, New Kosovo's Termocentral Project, residents have reportedly said they have suffered land losses, livelihoods. According to research, part of the residents have said they moved under a Action Plan for Displacement, which has not been in compliance, and over more than a decade, they have suffered poverty, they have been left homeless, they have faced lack of food, lack of land and unemployment.

In addition, the Bank's management reportedly explains that no Bank-backed project in Kosovo's mining and energy sector has required displacement and also acknowledges that past practices of shift to Kosovo that were done before the Bank's commitment have had negative effects on the affected population.

The Kosovo government had signed the commercial agreement with the American company Contour Globalʹ at the end of 2017 for the construction of New Kosovo thermal power plant, with a capacity of 500 megawatts, which would cost 1.3 billion euros.

However, in 2020 with a media release, the company showed that this project cannot be realised because of the opposition to the construction of this thermal power plant by Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti, then in the first term.

According to the Inspection Panel, since 2004 Hadja has been divided into three parts causing damage to the community as a whole and three sub-groups of her population in this way: those who were evacuated in 2004/05, affected by the involuntari shift from Shala in 2012, and other people whose future according to the Inspectation Panel is uncertain.

There were 158 families with 664 people undergone emergency evacuation in 2004/05. This included a group of 30 families forcibly expelled from the authorities at the time. As long as these families accepted compensation, neither did independent estimates of compensation levels nor systematic monitoring of their situation by any institution”, it is said among other things in the research.

Vicar Mirena, Hades resident told about The REL that “before the expropriation when we finally issued the certificates of property, it came to us that we owe, that we were actually free of debt. There are differences here with what has been decided, even what has been done”.

Radio Free Europe has asked the Ministry of Environment, Space Planning and Infrastructure about whether it is true that residents pay taxes even for the former property after they moved, but until the publication of this text, REL has not been answered.

In the event of the taxpayer's failure to pay tax duties, in the Kosovo Tax Administration's question-responding manual, ATK is said to take all measures that are ahead of tax legislation, where it will be passed on binding collection procedures.

With mandatory collections, it implies that the Kosovo Tax Administration has multiple authorisations, which are preamble with tax laws, both: the search for property information from both taxpayers and other parties, including banks, tax burden registration (in all active and real estate).

Compulsory collection also means: blocking bank accounts and confiscating means in them, blocking and confiscating the expected means from customers or employers, blocking goods for import or export, not allowing for evacuation from Kosovo, confiscating playable and real estate (with the exception of basic family life items), selling confiscated property, prosecution, etc.