Tag: Albania

The landmark ruling by the Administrative Court of Appeals in Tirana on Wednesday paved the way for the declassification and publication of written reports and statistical data produced by Albania’s Sigurimi security service.

After almost three years of legal efforts by BIRN Albania, the court dismissed arguments from the country’s current secret service that such information should be kept secret in perpetuity.

The ruling, which cannot be appealed, upheld a first-instance court decision from 2016.

BIRN first made a legal request for the declassification of Communist-era files back in March 2016, demanding yearly reports by the Sigurimi for the period from 1980 to 1989, as well as statistical information on the number of Albanians under active surveillance by the Sigurimi during that period.

The current State Information Service, SHISH, which has controlled a large part of the Sigurimi archive since the fall of Communism, first refused the request, claiming it didn’t have the authority to handle it.

Albania’s Freedom of Information Commissioner ordered SHISH to open the files and to reevaluate their status as secret, based on a 2014 law on freedom of information.

However, SHISH then insisted in September 2016 that the information sought by BIRN should remain a state secret.

BIRN challenged the decision in an administrative court, and won in the first instance in November 2016.

However, the Administrative Court of Appeals has a backlog of some 20,000 cases and the appeal decision only came almost three years after BIRN’s first freedom of information request.

During the hearing, SHISH emphasised that in its opinion, the files and statistics should remain “secrets in perpetuity”, and said that it has “an exclusive right” to decide whether to declassify them or not.

A number of other state institutions in Albania also keep classified information that was labelled as secret during the Communist period.

It is hoped that Wednesday’s court ruling will provide a guidance them on how to handle and publish the information.

For example, an Albanian parliamentary has access to the Sigurimi files, but only provides information from them to people prosecuted under Communism.

Theodoros Alexandritis, a human rights lawyer, told BIRN that the appeals court’s decision was “a brave step” in the right direction.

“The reluctance of the secret service to disclose any info and hold it under wraps forever shows that a culture of secrecy is still prevalent in that institution and that successive governments have not done anything to counter it,” Alexandritis said.

“In terms of the importance, the decision is clearly a brave step by the Albanian courts to bring their approach on this sensitive issue in line with international law standards and the European Court of Human Rights’ jurisprudence,” he added.

The report contains assessments of the transparency of the 61 local government units in Albania, based on 55 indicators, evaluated in both 2017 and 2019, tracing the progress made by local municipalities in the implementation of freedom of information and public consultation laws.

According to the monitoring data, the indicators were reached by 41 per cent of local municipalities in 2019, with the majority of the municipalities failing to reach half of the monitored target indicators. Compared with 2017, the average level of transparency of local municipalities dropped by five percentage points.

The monitoring of municipalities for the report was carried out in February 2019 by a network of local journalists across Albania. The publication of the report was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Balkan Trust for Democracy.

For a copy of the report in Albanian click here.

For a copy of the report in English click here.

The asset declarations of serving mayors were analysed with the help of three financial experts, who recorded and categorised in a database all the data declared by heads of municipalities in their annual asset disclosures.

The experts analysed the information using a plausibility check, a method of scrutiny used by Albania’s High Inspectorate of Declaration and Audit of Assets and Conflicts of Interest, HIDAACI, to investigate the wealth of public officials.

The goal of the report is to identify key trends contributing to the enrichment of the 61 heads of local municipalities in Albania.

The study sheds light not only on how mayors in Albania have accumulated wealth but also on key practices which obscure the origins of their money.

These include dividends from businesses, debts owed by family members, real estate transactions and cash kept outside the banking system.

To download a copy of the report in Albanian, click here.

The award was presented to BIRN Albania at a ceremony on April 2 by Partners Albania for Change and Development, a domestic organisation focused on strengthening democracy and democratic development.

Partners Albania gave BIRN the award “for the civil courage, professionalism and objectivity shown with investigative reports with a wide public impact”.

At the award ceremony, BIRN Albania executive director, Kristina Voko, thanked Partners Albania for the award, which she dedicated to BIRN’s staff and the many journalists with which the organisation works.

“This award would not be possible without the tireless work of our staff journalists and local reporters and the close cooperation between journalists and civil society,” Voko said.

Apart from BIRN, the Albanian Institute of Science, AIS, and the environmental organization Eco Albania were also recognised for their positive impact on democracy and transparency in the country.

“Klodiana Lala revealed in January that a political party has manipulated the 2017 parliamentary elections in cooperation with organized crime groups, threatening voters and promising illegal gains,” said Mark Worth, executive director of the European Center for the Rights of Whistleblowers, while presenting the prize.

“Her investigations for BIRN have revealed wiretaps of high level officials and former MPs involved in vote buying, corruption and criminal activities,” Worth added.

A journalist for Albania’s News 24, Lala was the recipient of a grant and mentorship from BIRN Albania editors, as part of an open call for stories on organised crime. She was part of a group of more than 30 journalists supported by BIRN Albania in 2018 with reporting grants.

As part of the call, Lala produced an investigation on the nexus between organised crime, local politicians and election fraud, published by BIRN Albania’s online publication reporter.al with a TV version broadcast VOA Albanian language.

Lala has reported on organised crime and justice for more than a decade. In August 2018, the home of her parents in Tirana was sprayed with bullets by an unidentified assailant. The attack was condemned by human rights organisations and politicians, but the culprits have yet to be identified.

The conference was organised by the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) parliamentary group to highlight the threat posed to biodiversity in the Balkans by thousands of planned hydropower plant projects.

Directed by film-maker Elton Baxhaku, the documentary ‘Free Flow’ follows Albania villagers, activists, scientists and artists as they try to draw attention – in court and on the streets – to the threat posed to the environment and the local ecotourism industry by power plant projects.

Present in a panel in the conference in Brussels, along with MEPs Stelios Kouloglou, GUE/NGL and Thomas Waitz, The Greens, BIRN Albania editor Besar Likmeta, highlighted the motivation that pushed BIRN to produce the documentary, underlining that the fight against power plant developers in the region was not only important for safeguarding the environment but was also about the struggle for democracy and the right of local communities to have a voice in the usage and the future of their resources.

The conference included also video spots from MEPs Knut Fleckenstein and Eduard Kukan, and was attended by activist and civil society representatives from Albania, the wider Balkans and EU countries.

BIRN is offering grants for three journalists to cover property rights and housing stories, as well as mentoring by experienced editors.

The call is held as part of the project ‘Exposing Corruption through Investigative Reporting’, financed by the National Endowment for Democracy.

The project’s aim is to strengthen journalistic reporting on corruption in the country through cooperation with civil society, in order to contribute to a more informed citizenry that is engaged in the democratic process.

Three journalists will be awarded grants to cover their expenses while conducting investigations and writing their stories on housing and property rights.

The journalists will have around three months to dig deeper and research their ideas, and will also have the opportunity to work with experienced editors as mentors to guide them through the process of writing in accordance with BIRN standards.

The call only applies to journalists from Albania and closes on March 10^th.

Click here for more information (in Albanian) about the application procedure.

Click here to download the application (in Albanian).