Isa Mulaj: Letter of complaint and a request for detailed investigation - 12th Annual Global Development Conference

From:            Isa Mulaj, Institute for Economic Policy Research and Analyses (INEPRA), Garibaldi St. H5/9, 10 000 Pristina, Republic of Kosovo

Tel: +377 44 112 397

E-mail: Isa.Mulaj@gmail.com

Web: www.ekonomia-ks.com

To:         Management Board of Global Development Network, 2^nd Floor, West Wing, ISID Complex, Vasabt Kunj Institutional Area, New Delhi – 110 070 INDIA

Tel: +91 11 261 394 94/261 368 85

Fax: +91 11 261 368 93  

Cc:         Washington D.C, USA: Suite 1210 1875, Connecticut Avenue NW Washington DC 20009.

Tel: +1 301 681 0911

Fax: + 1 301 592 0442

Cairo, Egypt: Building 144/A_ 3^rd Floor Smart Village, Cairo-Alex Desert Road Giza.

Tel: +202 3539 2420

Fax: 202 3539 2422

Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Republica de Colombia, Grupo Interno de Trabajo de Visas e Inmigracion, Coordinatora de Visas e Inmigration, Direction de Asuntos Migratorios y Consulares

E-mail:   conference@gdnet.org; connect@gdnet.org; mali@gdnet.org; awards@gdnet.org; dmassey@gdnet.org

Web:    www.gdnet.org

Subject: Letter of complaint and a request for detailed investigation - 12^th Annual Global Development Conference, Bogota, Colombia, January 11-13, 2011. 

Attn:     Ernesto Zedillo (Chairman, Board of Directors), Gerardo della Paolera (President), George Mavrotas (Chief Economist), Harriet Smith Winsdor (Secretary of State of Delaware), Claudia Sinning (Coordinator of Visa Immigration), Alejandro Gaviria (Dean of the Faculty of Economics, Universidad de Los Andes).

Dear all in this Letter of Complaint,

I am writing to you in relation to the 12^th Annual Global Development Network (GDN) Conference and I expect you to treat this complaint seriously, because the matter is serious. I was expected to be among the participants in the Conference and have received all needed documents for visa application to the Colombian Consulate in Sofia, Bulgaria. I was supposed to travel on January 9 at 5:30 a.m. from Pristina International Airport (Kosovo) via Munich and Frankfurt (Germany) to Bogota (Colombia). I am urgently informing you that not only I cannot come, but have run into a serious problem which I am asking you to investigate urgently, honestly and decisively.

Problem description:

Please note the following:

The letter of invitation by Mr. George Mavrotas, Chief Economist at the GDN, of November 23, 2010 addressed to the Colombian Consulate in Sofia, contains the following original address:

The Consul

Consulate of Colombia

Street Alexander Jendov

No. 1, Floor 6

Apartment 37 – 1113, P.O. Box 562

Sofia, Bulgaria

This address is available in many web sites, which can be proven if you search it in Google. The important thing to remember is that this is the only address of the Colombian Consulate in Sofia. Any other different address does not exist, and the letter of invitation which you have posted for me to Sofia and to me, appears to contain the very correct and the same address. I further have found telephone and fax number, and the e-mail of the Consulate in question as emcolsof@ttm.bg. I have submitted the documents through this e-mail address, and the message bounces back “Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently”, though below it indicates that it has been received by someone, which I am sure they have received. However, when I asked few questions and the e-mail to “emcolsof@ttm.bg” bounces back as usual but is received by the Consulate, the Consulate has never answered. I then was trying to reach them by phone in their number +359 2 97 13103 for a long time. The phone rings but no one answers. Please note that I have asked the GDN by e-mail to “conference@gdnet.org” as how you are getting through and contacting the Consulate. GDN advised me to ship my visa application documents together with my passport to the Colombian Consulate in Sofia. After receiving the last documents from the GDN and completed everything else, I sent them by DHL on the morning of December 22, and was notified by the DHL that they will arrive tomorrow or December 23. I expected to receive my passport back before the New Year, and obtain the Schengen transit visa from the German Embassy here in Kosovo. I constantly kept phoning the Consulate and no one answers, including their fax number +359 2 97 27660. Then on December 28 when I tried, the telephone operator says in Bulgarian “the number you have dialled is cut off or does not exist”.    

On January 03, 2011 I rushed to the DHL office to ask for my delivery, and the DHL does not work until January 05, as I understood, because of holidays. I appeared in the morning of January 05 at the DHL office to check for my delivery. They show me that it has not been delivered to the Consulate, and the status of postage is on hold since December 28. I urge the DHL to undertake a quick investigation and deliver my package to the due place and correct address immediately, otherwise “I will be forced to undertake legal measures against you, and the cost you (DHL) have to pay is very high indeed”, I warned the DHL clerk. Their initial answer was that my order was not delivered most likely because the address was not correct. I showed my documents which the GDN has sent to the Consulate in Sofia and asked: “But these have already gone to the same precise address; it can never be wrong or non-existent”. Then they searched through various forms, contacted DHL in Skopje and Sofia, and confirmed: “Your package cannot be delivered because the address is either wrong, or the Consulate has moved elsewhere”. They further tried to phone the Consulate and this time confirmed what I already found since December 28 – that the Colombian Consulate number in Sofia is cut off or does not exist.

Claim:

The Consulate has not yet changed the address, or the one that the GDN and I provided. When a Consulate or Embassy changes its location and address, it announces at least few months in advance that it is moving elsewhere, because of disruptions it may cause with so many correspondences that are underway. Even if the Consulate has already moved, it still leaves someone in previous site and building to receive mails, to make sure they are received. But the Colombian Consulate in Sofia has not yet changed its address and the correspondence from all over the world is advised to be directed to the same address that is provided by the GDN, me, and Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If the Consulate moves into another location within Sofia, it can still maintain the same telephone number, let alone the e-mail address.    

Question to GDN and Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

Can you honestly and fairly confirm that the address which You and me provided is correct, and the Colombian Consulate in Sofia does not have any other address, or has not changed the location and building until the New Year 2011? This is critically important to investigate and confirm, because, in case it is correct, then the entire blame lays on the DHL and will undertake all needed legal measures against it and require remedies for the damages inflicted on me as a result of its negligence. In this way the GDN and the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs would be free of accountability. The GDN logistics team certainly should be kept accountable to some extent for this organized conspiracy to cause harm.

I have travelled before to Sofia for a visa of another country. Everything was and can be sorted out within a day. I take a bus from Pristina to Skopje, then from Skopje to Sofia, apply for the visa, walk a little through the city and relax in a café, go back to the respective embassy, get the visa afternoon, and come back to Pristina in the evening. Now, pay a very careful attention to this:

DHL, with very expensive tariffs, is not able to deliver my stuff to Sofia for a week with supersonic jets and/or high speed vehicles! In case of travelling by bus full of passengers and load involving detailed control at the border crossing with a little delay, waiting for an hour or so in Skopje bus station to take the other bus to Sofia (also full of passengers and loads), arrive in Sofia, get a taxi to the Embassy and get everything done about the visa within a day, including a way back home in the evening. Whatever the DHL fault is, I will run after them. But, please be kindly aware of the following:

GDN has notified me that the Colombian Consulate has waived my physical presence there. What I needed was to send my documents and passport for visa application through a courier – DHL. This indicates that the GDN was in touch and communicating with the Consulate (or it has done so though the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), something which I was not able neither by phone nor e-mail. Given that I do not trust things without being able to verify, I prepared the documents for a visa to Bulgaria. I wanted to be physically present to the Colombian Consulate, despite the GDN promise. Bulgarian Embassy here in Pristina, after the appointment I made, said: “Everything is OK with all your documents. What we need is a letter of invitation by the Colombian Consulate in Sofia to tell us that you are precisely going to the Colombian Consulate. Get it in whatever form; by mail, fax, e-mail, that’s all we need”. But the Colombian Consulate remained silent towards my request to issue such a letter of invitation either to me or to the Bulgarian Embassy in Pristina. The famous e-mail emcolsof@ttm.bg was in business as usual as I described earlier.

It was January 8 yesterday, my birthday, and my saddest day in my life so far. I am now without my passport. Given Kosovo’s very small size, I cannot travel anywhere. I am virtually blocked thanks to, either the GDN or its network of conspiracy. I have made a lot of expenses and spent so much time after the project proposal submitted to you at your call. Who should pay these expenses? Now, can imagine living in a country of less than 11 000 square kilometres (including around 3 000 square kilometres that are a “no-go zone”) without a passport? DHL may return my passport, but there is a procedure and it may charge me more or twice as much than in the case when I ordered the delivery. An authorization is needed and it takes at least a week to get my passport back. Applying and getting a new passport may be easier and cheaper, but this too, takes a long time and procedures. First, I should report the case of losing and relinquishing my passport with Kosovo Police and the issuing authority – Kosovo Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Second, I need to prepare all new needed documents and apply for the new passport. Third, the minimum time the issuing authority sets to equip me with the passport is 30 days. Please keep in mind that I can travel without a passport at a maximum distance of 100km, including the mountains, and not beyond from where I am now. Fourth, if I get the new passport, someone may still do business with my previous one. Question: “Who needs my current passport and who is doing business with it? GDN, DHL, or the Colombian Consulate in Sofia?

I am attaching a revised version of the project proposal, for which I still have not received the final answer from the GDN evaluation team. There is some information which I have added (you can notice them by track changes), and filling a section which previously was missing, but the proposal as a whole remains the same. I need a final answer to this proposal. I also need a very strong guarantee that it will not be stolen. In your requirements, you state that the GDN takes plagiarism very seriously. Give me the smallest chance of monitoring plagiarism, then I will show who may deal with it. When I am forced to make expenses in the name of GDN and remained without identity, then how can you guarantee me that my proposal will not be used, misused and abused by your evaluation team from the World Bank and Massachusetts Institute of Technology? I would appreciate if your team could honestly assess once again the proposal attached.

Since the proposal is made in terms of Japanese Award for Outstanding Research on Development, I need the address of Japanese Government from you. They should know and be aware what are you doing against me with their funds.       

Please kindly be advised that I am aware that you are capable of talking and writing. What I want from you is to act on real terms. I do not get impressed by talks and writings unless they are not based on “adaequatio rei et intellectus”. I do not trust things like democracy, communism, national-socialism, social-democracy, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Atheism, Deism, or even development economics. In “adaequatio rei et intellectus” I trust. The harm which I received by the GDN, the DHL, and the Colombian Consulate in Sofia, is also “adaequatio rei et intellectus”. I do not need only talks and writings by Your side, but concrete measures, because, my experience with you incurred costs and the danger of abusing my identity. These are concrete things.

With deep concern

Isa Mulaj

January 09, 2011.