Albania ravaged by ‘gangrene’ of corruption

Tirana - Lusha Qogle was asked to pay 5 000 euros (US$5 520) for a court document proving she had sold her bar in the Albanian capital 20 years ago: 1 000 euros for her lawyer, 4 000 euros for the judges.
“Corruption! With a capital C!” said Qogle, 56, voicing the outrage felt by many of the Balkan nation’s 2.7 million people.
But slapped with a 20 000 euros invoice for unpaid electricity bills going back years, she needs the document to prove she has had nothing to do with the bar for two decades.
Albania’s judiciary is ravaged by corruption and the European Union has said it cannot join the 28-member bloc until it cleans up its act.
According to surveys, 90% of Albanians are desperate to see the sweeping reforms demanded by Brussels.
Lawyer Artan Haxhia told AFP that his peers “sometimes serve as middlemen” in arranging deals, while waiting for hearings.
“Here trials are led like auctions, it is bargaining,” he said.
There are frequent land disputes in the agrarian nation that suffers from poor record keeping. Houses destroyed without due process, divorces are wrongly recorded and organised crime is rampant: no area is free of corruption.
“It is endemic,” said the country’s ombudsman Igli Totozani. “It is the gangrene of Albania”.
Politicians of all political stripes agree.
Albanians “distrust the judiciary, they distrust politicians,” the centre-right opposition leader Lulzim Basha said.
For Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama, the judicial system is the “shame of this country”.
According to an expert report published on parliament’s website, many Albanians believe that some magistrates “pay between 100 000 and 300 000 euros for a better position in urban areas,” where they can earn more money in kickbacks.
Another common perception is that a prisoner could arrange to be moved from solitary confinement to house arrest for “60 000 to 80 000 euros”.
Fatri Islamaj, the head of Tirana’s main court, said that while corruption does exist, “the perception of its magnitude is greater than reality”.
“Corrupt judges should not be retained,” Islamaj said, adding that only “four or five” of some 700 judges or prosecutors in the country had been axed.
Earlier this month, the state attorney’s office sought five years imprisonment for a prosecutor from the southern town of Saranda, who reportedly asked for 80 000 euros from a litigant in a land dispute to rule in his favour.
In its latest annual report on Albania, the European Parliament singled out “political interference” and a “high level of corruption”.
The judicial reform package negotiated with European help has been blocked as the opposition is opposed to foreigners being included in a body tasked with examining candidates for magistrates.
Prime Minister Rama has also rejected the involvement of political parties, including the opposition, in the body.
He is backed by Knut Fleckenstein, the European Parliament’s rapporteur for Albania, who has been trying to foster dialogue between the parties since 2014.
“As long as the judges are all - in one way or another – dependent on some politician, the corruption will not stop,” he said.
The US ambassador to Albania Donald Lu warned last month that “judicial corruption not only allows judges and politicians to fill their pockets with corrupt money, it is destroying the lives of normal, honest people”.
In late June, the chairman of the German parliament’s EU Affairs Committee, Gunther Krichbaum, threatened to revoke Albania’s status as an EU candidate, obtained in 2014.
The threat provoked a fierce outcry.
Ombudsman Totozani said he trusts “only in the international community,” describing the country as a paradox – a democra­tic system with no democratic culture.- Nampa/AFP