Merita Mustafa, the director of a little known bureau of metrics, recently became known to the public for the first time after it was revealed that the changed the regulation acts several times to benefit a newly founded company owned by a person close to First Deputy Prime Minister Artan Grubi. Mustafa enabled the company to receive a license and charge exorbitant sums for inspections of gas station pumps.

Now, VMRO-DPMNE has revealed that Mustafa has additional suspicious dealings. In 2019, she authorised the purchase of a mobile testing lab for 600,000 EUR. “This is three times more than the price offered for the same lab, by the same provider, to the State market inspector. Furthermore, the laboratory proved to be unusable and was stripped of its equipment. Mustafa overpaid for a mobile laboratory only to get a tationary one”, VMRO-DPMNE said in a statement.

The party pointed to several other contracts, worth 1.5 million EUR, that Mustafa signed off on, that also appear to include inflated prices. Grubi’s wielding of power caused a deep rift in the DUI party and a new faction works to overthrow him. In response, the party pushed its partner SDSM to include a new Albanian party in their coalition – the Alliance of Albanians – in an attempt to sustain the slim ruling majority.