Global Courant 2023-05-30 02:24:31
The head of the board of the Albanian-American Foundation for Development, Michael Granoff, was invited this evening to “Top Story”.
Granoff explained where the American-Albanian fund gets its money. According to him, the fund has its source from the American government.
“30 million dollars were given with the money of American taxpayers, in order to be able to create a private sector economy in Albania, in a transparent and direct way. We spent the next 10 years investing that money in a variety of companies, testing this model.
We set up the American Bank of Albania, we revolutionized the entire banking industry in Albania, the insurance market as well. We are investors in a shopping center. We opened and developed a number of companies. They changed the private sector in Albania”.
The goal, according to Granoffm, was to create a fund that will operate permanently in Albania.
“We made a deal with the US government where it was stipulated that we would initially give half of the 30 million and we would keep the other half, plus any profits we made, to put into a fund that would operate permanently in Albania.
They would be given for the same purposes as the fund for the private sector, on a non-profit basis. We were very lucky because we were able to create quite a lot of capital, raise quite a lot of capital, more than any other fund in the countries of the former Soviet Union.
So that $30 million endowment enabled us to create the foundation that we’re creating today. And the foundation’s job is to give money, so we don’t make a profit. All the money goes to Albania”.
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