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Albanian Deputy Minister Arrested

18 09 2007  Tirana _ Albania’s Deputy Minister of Transport, Nikolin Jaka, and several senior officials from his ministry were arrested on Tuesday, on charges of corruption related to a series of road tenders over the last two months.

In addition to Jaka, the police operation, codenamed “Clean Hands”, has resulted in the detention of eight persons.

They include Bashkim Kamberi, general director of roads in the Ministry of Transport, other officials, as well as three businessmen.

The officials have been charged with favouring several companies among those tendering for the construction of a number of roads.

The police operation, which recalls the campaigning slogan of the current governing centre-right coalition during the July 2005 parliamentary elections, came while the government remained under fire over another major road construction project.

The prosecutor-general’s office has been investigating possible irregularities in the tender for the construction of the Durres-Kukes highway, Albania’s largest public works project over the past two decades.

The highway would link the port of Durres with Kosovo, cutting travel time between the Albanian coast and Pristina, from 8 hours to 2.5 hours.

The project includes a 7-km-tunnel, the longest in the Balkans, and is now buing built by the American-Turkish consortium, Bechtel-Enka.

The prosecutor-general’s office has already questioned the former deputy Minister of Transport, Armand Teliti, and is seeking a similar meeting with the former Minister of Transport, Lulzim Basha, now the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Basha has refused to cooperate with prosecutors, and has said the charges against him are politically motivated.

Questioned in parliament on Tuesday on the construction project, Prime Minister Sali Berisha denied there were any irregularities, but avoided giving an answer as to whether Basha would cooperate with the prosecutors.

“I have followed the charges of the opposition related to this project, but they don’t stand up”, the prime minister said.

Berisha has had a strained relationship with the Prosecutor-General, Theodhori Sollaku, often accusing him of corruption.

Sollaku has denied the charges.