Since August 2025 the Albanian government has been paying, on average, more than three million euros a month to a company that did not exist a year earlier, according to treasury records. Millions more are allegedly paid through unreported or classified transactions. All without a single public tender.
Timak Defence, a joint public-private company with the Albanian government holding only a 20% interest, was established in August 2025 to produce and supply military vehicles and equipment for the Albanian armed forces.
A sister venture with the same ownership structure, Advanced Arms Technology, is tasked with building or purchasing light and medium firearms and military drones for the armed forces.
Behind both companies stands the same man, Ron Yeffet, an Israeli businessman and a friend of Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.
To find out who Albania has handed its military supply chain to, we looked at the places and ventures Yeffet has been involved in: Dakar, Lagos, N'Djamena, Manhattan and Miami.
A consistent but not reassuring picture emerges.
A family name that opens doors
Ron Yeffet was born in Jerusalem in 1966, according to the sponsored biographies he has been placing online this year. What he does not reveal is that he is the son of Isaac Yeffet, who ran security for El Al, Israel’s national carrier, and for Israel's foreign ministry.
After moving to New Jersey in the late 1980s, Yeffet senior became one of the most-quoted aviation-security experts in America, appearing on CNN and other American channels.
The father has served as a credential that helped introduce his son to power but was also involved in some of his business affairs.
Most notably, the father was sued alongside his son by the Republic of Togo and was part of the Senegal House affair, as shown in court documents and media reports, as shown below.
Senegal: one president, many crony deals
Despite his claims for broad business involvements in Africa, according to public evidence Ron Yeffet's African career begins and ends with the presidency of Macky Sall of Senegal, who made Yeffet Senegal's honorary consul in Tel Aviv. (The Senegalese press has indicated this appointment has been terminated, though Yeffet continues to use the title in several sponsored 2026 press releases.)
In August 2013, Yeffet registered a company in Dakar, Develop Sénégal Company (DSC), and six days later asked to be handed, without competition, a 24-million-euro contract to build student housing at the country's main university. He eventually received the contract, despite objections from procurement agencies.
Senegalese reporting from 2018 alleged that once the contracts were secured, Yeffet subcontracted the actual building works to local firms for less than half the price and kept the difference.
More no-tender contracts for university and police housing followed, worth in total some 55 million euros.
Senegalese media have accused that these public dealings were secured through direct negotiations without public bidding and did not involve any financial commitment from Yeffet.
In the last years of Sall’s presidency, Yeffet obtained a thirty-year lease on a hectare of seafront land in the most expensive district of Dakar for building a hotel, a marina and luxury apartments, an investment he valued at 140 million euros.
Critics said the lease on this stretch of protected coastline was granted underhand.
When Senegal elected a new president on an anti-corruption platform in March 2024, the construction site was stopped, and the state took the land back along with three other Dakar properties Yeffet held on long leases. The anti-corruption office handed its files to the courts.
Senegalese media reported in August 2026 that Yeffet’s DSC was among 36 companies that financial-crime prosecutors are probing following an audit of public finances during the previous government.
No charges against Yeffet have been issued.
Nigeria and Chad: the Africa that never happened
Senegal was not the only African country he tried to get involved.
In June 2014 Nigeria's junior power minister signed a memorandum with Ron Yeffet, introduced as the head of Yeffet Mesika Group, for building a gas-fired power station in the Niger Delta, to be financed entirely by the foreign investor.
No size, price or timetable was given, and no plant was ever built.
Four years later, Yeffet, now introduced as the president of an entity called Team of African, was received at the presidential palace in Chad to propose a 300-million-euro biofuel power station.
Nothing came of it, either.
Manhattan: selling Senegal its own building
In 2009 Senegal bought a vacant lot on East 44th Street in Manhattan, a few hundred metres from the United Nations.
The plot purchased for about 24 million dollars was slated to build a Maison du Sénégal, a multipurpose building to host Senegal’s mission to the UN, a Senegalese cultural centre, as well as offices and apartments for diplomats.
The government signed a letter of intention to partner with a New York developer for the construction, but once President Macky Sall came to power, it reneged on the commitment in favour of a rival company owned by Ron Yeffet.
The initial partner sued Senegal in 2013, but the suit was settled out of court.
Then, Senegal transferred a half-interest in the site to Yeffet’s company for 25 million dollars. It is worth noting that, at the time, Yeffet’s company was in default to its own bank (as explained below regarding the Signature Bank case).
A nineteen-storey tower was built on the site with Isaac Yeffet, Senegal's own UN ambassador, and a Long Island builder, Adam Gordon, as the development partners.
After the building was finished in 2020, Senegal paid 24.6 million dollars to buy back space on the ground floor for its UN mission and fifteen apartments in a building that stood on land it had owned outright a decade earlier.
Senegal thus paid 24 million dollars for the land, received 25 million for half of it, and then paid 24.6 million for the part of the building it now owns.
The Yeffet–Gordon partnership kept the rest of the tower to sell.
The Senegalese press called it a scandal. The deal was investigated, and irregularities were found, including the allegation that the plot purchase price was higher than the market, but no charges were ever made.
It ended as a very good deal for one side, Ron Yeffet’s side.
Togo: a mission handed over for nothing, mortgaged, and left to collapse
The Togo affair follows the same template as that of Senegal House, with even a more dramatic ending.
For fifty years Togo owned a small building at 112 East 40th Street in Manhattan that housed its mission to the United Nations.
In late 2018, according to the lawsuit Togo filed in 2024, Ron Yeffet, his father and Adam Gordon came to the Togolese government with an offer: give us the building; we will knock it down and build a new one at our own expense within two years, and you will get back a new floor for your mission while we sell the apartments above it.
Togo agreed, signed the papers in January 2019, and handed over the title to a Yeffet-connected company without receiving a cent for it.
The mission moved into rented offices to wait.
What Togo says happened instead is simple.
The developers borrowed six million dollars from a bank against the building they had just been given and later refinanced it with a private lender.
They never built anything.
The empty mission building was left to rot until, in the summer of 2024, its roof and front wall collapsed, and the New York City ordered it demolished as a danger to the public.
A sovereign state was thus left with no building, no land title, and someone else's mortgage on the land.
Togo sued Yeffet, his father and Gordon personally, as well as their companies, for fraud and for at least 30 million dollars, or the return of its land free of debt.
The Togolese government calls Yeffets companies shell structures, which the three men used to pocket the loan money mortgaged on the land.
The case is still open in New York court.
One detail ties the affair to the rest of this story: Yeffet's companies involved give as their address the tower on East 44th Street that the same trio built with Senegal.
Miami: “investments” solicited, signed debt, unpaid
Mark Faist, an energy trader, retired to Miami in 2018, where he met Yeffet there; both live on Fisher Island, a gated enclave off Miami Beach.
According to the lawsuit Faist filed in March 2026, Yeffet spent two years cultivating him before any money changed hands.
He introduced Faist to his family, talked about his charity and his faith, and boasted of "private planes, expensive watercrafts, and high-priced luxury watches".
In March 2020, as the pandemic closed America's airports, he flew the Faists to Paris on his jet, took them to Versailles and introduced them to the Prime Minister of Albania and Albania's ambassador to France.
In late 2020, Yeffet pitched Faist with a "once-in-a-generation" chance to buy distressed New York property at a discount; Faist would be Yeffet's "first and only partner"; and there could be no loss, because he could withdraw at any time and would at worst get his money back.
Faist wired 8.6 million dollars to Yeffet’s R&I Trading, “opportunity” by “opportunity” as solicited by Yeffet.
In between the wires came the trips: Albania and Rome, St Barts, Bordeaux, Paris again, and Capri. On the beach at St Barts, Yeffet told Faist that he had been worth more than a billion dollars since 2013.
In Albania, the complaint says the two men were driven around the country "in a motorcade complete with armed security personnel", stayed at a guarded compound with private chefs, and Yeffet "dangled the prospect of procuring an Albanian passport" for his guest.
Faist never saw a dollar in returns, and when he asked for documents of the investments that Yeffet had made, he got only verbal reassurances.
In early 2025, now suspicious, Faist asked for his money back. Yeffet returned only one million dollars but would not commit to a date for the rest.
Threatened with a fraud suit, Yeffet signed a settlement in September 2025. Under the agreement, Yeffet and R&I Trading accepted joint responsibility for paying $7.6 million plus interest within ninety days, later extended with two more months.
Yeffet failed to pay, and Faist immediately sued.
Yeffet filed a counterclaim alleging that due to the defamatory statements made publicly by Faist on the case, which were reported by the Albanian media, Yeffet was excluded from an Albanian real estate project that would have benefitted him 30 million dollars. He did not produce any evidence to support the claim.
The case is ongoing in Miami Court.
In the meantime, Yeffet's initial lawyers walked away, citing unpaid fees.
A String of Other Cases in American Courts
Faist's is the largest of Yeffet's American cases, but not the first.
In October 2013, in the very month Senegal was settling on him as its partner for the East 44th Street tower, Signature Bank sued his construction company and Yeffet personally in New York over a 250,000-dollar loan the company had failed to repay. The case was settled.
In 2019, the owners of a 15,000-dollar-a-month apartment he rented in the Porsche Design Tower sued him for damage they said had been painted over and hidden behind moved furniture; he ignored the case until they moved for a default judgement, then denied everything, then settled.
In 2020 his companies sued a Connecticut workshop over the leather and carpet in a Gulfstream jet they had bought in 2018 — the jet, presumably, that later flew the Faists to Paris.
In August 2025, a Miami boatyard sued him over 55,000 dollars in unpaid repair and storage bills for his fifty-foot powerboat; he counter-sued, claiming the work was so bad it "needs to be redone", and in February 2026 a federal judge threw his counterclaim out because it contained no facts at all. The case is ongoing.
The money sums in these cases are small. The sequence is not: first a bill or a debt, then a refusal, silence until the court is about to act, then a settlement or a counter-accusation.
Many names, many companies
One practical difficulty in tracing Yeffet is that he rarely appears twice under the same label. He is Ron Yeffet, but also Ron Yefett or Ron Yaffet.
His companies multiply the same way, one for each deal and each country:
— R&I Trading and RY Aviation in the United States;
— GSR Concrete and East 44th Developers for the Senegal House tower in New York;
— 40th Development, CMSJ Development and CMSJKA Capital for the Togo building in New York;
— Yeffet Mesika Group in Nigeria;
— Team of African in Chad;
— Develop Sénégal Company in Senegal;
— Uno 18, 1820 Black Oil, 1820 Albania, Timak, Timak Defence, Timak Aviation, Timka Special Vehicles , Timak Horse Club, and Advanced Arms Technology in Albania.
Each is small, new and thinly funded; the value sits in the relationship, not the balance sheet.
The effect, whether intended or not, is that no single register, court or journalist ever sees the whole picture, and a background check on any one company comes back clean.
And finally the big hit: Albania
Yeffet became an Albanian citizen in November 2018. It is not known why he was granted citizenship or how his interest in Albania began.
Several people who know Yeffet told Exit.al that he came to Albania because of his prior relationship with Prime Minister Rama, but no one we talked to knows how or when the two met.
Nevertheless, they all describe their relationship as very tight.
As in Senegal, the friendship with the man at the top has proved very rewarding for Yeffet in Albania.
Yeffet first appears in Albanian company records in 2018, briefly, as a minority shareholder in the company that held a stake in Air Albania.
A source confirmed that it was the prime minister that secured his partnership in the company, but eventually he was pushed out due to the rejections by the Turkish partner of Air Albania.
Yeffet was not heard of in public for some years, but the Faist lawsuit indicates that in early 2020 he could produce the Prime Minister for a private dinner in Paris.
By November 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, he could tour Albania with Faist in a motorcade with a security detail and promise him an Albanian passport.
Three years later, Yeffet establishes himself in Albania.
According to Albania’s company registry records, he incorporated two companies in 2023, 1820 Black Oil and 1820 Albania, with fuel trade and IT services as business activities, respectively.
Another company, UNO18, was incorporated by him in 2024 with business activity the supply and sale of spare parts for aircraft. None of them had any activity, as indicated by their tax filings.
Things changed in 2025.
In June last year, Yeffet bought for around 500 euros 49% of Timak shares, a vehicle-body upfitter, owned by a young businesswoman called Arjeta Puca, according to the company registry.
A few days earlier the Council of Ministers had authorised the state-owned defence company Kayo to negotiate a "public-private partnership" for the production and supply of military vehicles.
In early August, Kayo established a joint company with Timak called Timak Defence.
Timak holds an 80% stake while the Albanian state holds 20%. This means Yeffet holds an interest of almost 40% in a company that practically supplies all military vehicles and equipment to armed forces.
Given its ownership structure, with government holding a minor stake, it avoids public procurement rules.
Around the same period, Kayo also established another joint venture with Yeffet’s UNO18. Advanced Arms Technology, with UNO18 holding an 80% stake, will produce, purchase and supply Albania’s armed forces with drones and light- and medium-calibre weapons.
Through these partnerships, Yeffet's companies will dominate the supply of Albania's armed forces and stand to receive hundreds of millions of euros a year in government contracts.
The Albanian story, in other words, repeats the Senegalese one point for point: access through the head of government and contracts by negotiation rather than tender. Only the scale is significantly higher.
The Yeffet method
Set all the above episodes side by side, and a single way of doing business emerges.
Yeffet does not compete for work; he is introduced to it. The entry point is usually a top leader — a president, a prime minister, or a minister — who provides direct no-bid contracts financed with public money or capital.
Value is extracted through structure rather than theft: subcontracting a job for half the contract price, selling a government back its own building, and borrowing six million dollars against a building handed over for nothing.
And when the sponsor falls or a creditor presses, it usually ends the same way: a lawsuit by the state, an asset-recovery order, a settlement signed and not honoured, a bank loan defaulted, and a law firm unpaid.
The Faist complaint describes a pattern often associated with confidence schemes: displays of staged wealth, cultivated access to political leaders and prolonged hospitality used to establish trust before money was requested.
Indeed, Yeffet used the Albanian prime minister as collateral to persuade Faist to hand him more than 8.6 million dollars.
No known evidence shows Yeffet operating in an open market: all documented ventures of his career have had a government as client, partner or landlord.
The little he has built has been financed by governments or on capital raised against land provided by governments.
The public record shows that what he has pitched on his own account, from the power plants to the Togo mission to the New York bargains promised to Faist, produced nothing.
And now that the record has turned against him, he is trying to bury it.
Between April and June 2026, a personal website, a press release he issued himself and a string of paid "interviews" in Brainz Magazine, BM Magazine, Winger Daily and openPR appeared online, all presenting Yeffet as an "international project leader" with infrastructure and energy work "across Africa" and Europe.
Not one of them names a single project, client, contract or company.
A man with a portfolio names it.
A man managing search results does not.
Shpërndaje te miqtë
