Balkan Investigative Reporting Network
Arita completed her Bachelor’s degree in Public Policy and Management with a sub-branch in International Relations at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT Kosovo).
She has worked for RIT Kosovo’s Library and Administration Departments, as well as in the marketing industry for ISO Standards certification companies. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Management at Universum College.
BIRN Kosovo held its first training session with the Auditor General and Head of Department for International Communication and Cooperation in Auditing on February 3 as part of a project aimed at increasing transparency and accountability over the management of public funds.
Supported by the embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Pristina, the training courses are intended to improve the performance of the Auditor General and National Audit Office staff in reporting and providing information on public spending.
During the training, the executive director of Internews Kosovo and Pproducer and director of the ‘Life in Kosovo’ TV show, Faik Ispahiu, gave insights into how to organise a public presentation, including arranging the space, assigning tasks, preparing speeches, and creating a presentation plan.
The training was followed up with a technical exercise showing how to use a prompter during public appearances.
BIRN Kosovo will provide the Auditor General and the National Audit Office with two further training sessions, aimed at improving the performance of the Auditor General and National Audit Office staff during public appearances and on social media.
BIRN Kosovo gave a training course for local media in Gjakova/Djakovica and the surrounding area on January 27, focusing on fact-checking standards in journalism.
During the first part of the training, media representatives looked into the importance of facts in research, learning how to employ BIRN’s own fact-checking tool, the ‘Krypometer’ (‘Truth-o-Meter’).
The second section of the seminar continued with training related to ethics in journalism, truthful reporting, privacy, copyright, and resource protection.
During the third section, participants had the opportunity to gain insight into reporting based on whistleblowing, journalistic security, research based on International Fact-Checking Network standards and in-depth research for television.
The training was led by Visar Prebreza, editor at BIRN Kosovo and Labinot Leposhtica, the head of BIRN’s Legal Office.
Local journalists, media correspondents and court monitors working in the municipalities of Gjakova, Istog, Malisheva and Rahovec participated in the training.
The course was organised by the ‘Civil Society Program for Albania and Kosovo’, funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and managed by the Kosovo Foundation for Civil Society (KCSF) in partnership with Partners Albania for Change and Development (PA).
The 2019 monitoring report on the Kosovo Tax Administration, TAK, from BIRN Kosovo and Democracy Plus concludes that most of the recommendations from the previous year’s report were fulfilled but also identifies numerous other management and disciplinary problems within the institution.
Political employments, the involvement of TAK officials in political activities, weak disciplinary sanctions, and TAK officials’ links to accountants are among the key findings of this year’s monitoring report, which was discussed a few days ago at a roundtable with TAK officials, and released in full online on Monday.
Monitors also discovered that, in September, 30 officials within the institution were holding positions in political parties while also working for TAK.
As part of the monitoring process, researchers met with over 19 accountants and discovered numerous instances of improper links between TAK officials and accountants. The report also outlines unclarities in the process of TAK’s restructuring and administration reform.
Kosovo citizens assisted the monitoring, reporting irregularities through the KALLXO.com platform. According to the report, they submitted 68 reports related to tax evasion, the informal economy and political and nepotistic appointments between January and December 2019.
Over the same period, 53 legal letters were sent to TAK, passing on information about tax evasion, the informal economy, and illegal betting stores, as well as requesting access to documents related to employment, and information on political activities involving senior TAK officials.
As a result of these legal letters, inspections were carried out on 107 different businesses throughout the territory of the Republic of Kosovo, after which over 50,000 euros of fines were imposed.
BIRN Kosovo and Democracy Plus will continue to monitor TAK’s work throughout 2020.
Report is available for free download in English, Albanian and Serbian.
BIRN Kosovo held a round-table discussion on December 19 about public debt and capital investments in Kosovo.
The discussion was organised as part of an EU-funded project entitled ‘CSOs as equal partners in the monitoring of public finance’ in which BIRN Kosovo is among ten partners from across the Balkans.
Panellists at the discussion were Hekuran Murati, a member of parliament from Vetevendosje, Ahmet Ismaili, director of the Ministry of Finance Treasury, and Sokol Havolli, deputy governor of the Central Bank of Kosovo. It was moderated by kallxo.com’s managing editor, Visar Prebreza.
The panellists discussed the current level of public debt in Kosovo and institutions’ capacity to manage loans, as in many cases publicly-financed projects have been delayed due to financial mismanagement. They also discussed which projects most deserve public financing.
The discussion included officials from the Tax Administration of Kosovo, the National Audit Office, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economic Development and civil society organisations.
Seventeen journalists from local media in Pristina took part in a training session on reporting on cases of violent extremism on December 10, organised by BIRN Kosovo and held at the Student Centre in Kosovo’s capital.
The training was divided into two sessions; one was held by Kosovo’s Counterterrorism National Coordinator, Fatos Makolli, while the second session was hosted by Kreshnik Gashi, anchor of BIRN Kosovo’s ‘Justice in Kosovo’ TV show.
Makolli outlined how radical Islamic ideology spread in Kosovo, the role of the Kosovo government and civil society in reintegrating returnees from the Middle Eastern conflict zone, and the importance of the media in responsibly reporting cases of violent extremism.
He suggested that the media must continue to work with institutions, not just to receive information and share it, but to be a partner. Makolli also briefly described the failure of international organisations in tackling the issue of radicalisation, blaming it on a preoccupation with inter-ethnic issues.
According to Makolli, the most successful project for countering violent extremism was Kosovo’s membership of UEFA and FIFA, as it offered a new perspective for the youth of Kosovo. For Makolli, preventing radicalisation means promoting values which include tolerance and diversity.
Gashi engaged in a more in-depth conversation with the participants and provided them with techniques for reporting cases of violent extremism correctly and precisely, while protecting the public and without causing unnecessary public fear and trauma.
He pointed out that reporting should not, in any situation, contain unreliable or false news which misinforms the public.
This training was organised as part of the ‘For a Resilient Community’ project, funded by the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund, GCERF.
On Tuesday, December 10, in the Municipality of South Mitrovica, BIRN Kosovo held the fifth of its series of debates discussing the findings of its audit report monitoring project, which analyzes reports published by the National Audit Office on Kosovo’s municipalities.
The results of BIRN’s monitoring and analysis were published and discussed in an open debate with more than 25 participants from the municipality, the National Audit Office and representatives from civil society. The debate was also streamed live on BIRN’s anti-corruption platform KALLXO.com.
Visar Prebreza, BIRN Kosovo’s managing editor, gave a brief presentation on the project and its findings. According to Prebreza, the number of recommendations received by the municipality from the National Audit Office is high, though continuously decreasing: from 25 recommendations in 2015 to 16 recommendations in 2018. However, a number of recommendations have been repeated year after year, and there have been ongoing procurement problems.
Deputy Mayor of Mitrovica Faruk Mujka said that the debate had a very positive impact. “This report presents a true and fair view of all financial aspects,” he said. “The report shows that Mitrovica has made positive steps toward implementing recommendations but there is room for improvement. Most of the findings are due to a lack of coordination between the local and central level.”
During the debate, Shkelqim Xhema, a representative from the National Audit Office stated that full implementation of the recommendations will lead to a better performance from the Municipality and better services provided to citizens. In 2018, five out of 17 recommendations were addressed, three were partially addressed, one was considered closed, while eight were not addressed at all.
Alongside providing an avenue to discuss the municipality’s implementation of recommendations by the Audit Office, these debates also gave BIRN an opportunity to record promises made both by the General Auditor and the Municipality of South Mitrovica, to be followed-up through Kallxo.com’s fact-checking platform, “Krypometer.”
The debate was organized within the framework of the “Support civil society to increase public oversight and accountability of Kosovo public institutions” project, which is funded by the British Embassy in Prishtina. This specific activity is organized as part of the component looking into the compliance of targeted institutions with the recommendations from the Auditor General’s reports.
The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, held a workshop with local journalists in Kosovo on reporting on energy efficiency and environmental issues on December 7.
It was held together with TV Mreza, a network of TV stations broadcasting in Serbian across all Serbian-majority areas of Kosovo, in an activity supported by the EU Office in Kosovo.
Those conducting the workshop included Jeta Xharra, BIRN Kosovo’s executive director, Visar Prebreza, managing editor of BIRN Kosovo and Petar Vidov, editor-in-chief of the Croatian media platform, Faktograf.
Eighteen local journalists attended, from Kossev, Kent FM, RTV Kim, RTV Puls, Medija Centar, Radio Gorazdevac, Insajderi, Indeksonline and from the civil society organisation Green Energy Kosova.
In the workshop, Xharra discussed the long journey of the Kosovo Civil Society Consortium for Sustainable Development, KOSID, in addressing pressing environmental issues, including campaigning against the financing of coal-power plants, especially the newly planned coal-power plant Kosova e Re, planned to be built in Obiliq, 10 kilometers from the capital, Prishtina.
Prebreza presented a lecture on the crimes committed to the local environment and on environmental reporting. He also outlined the investigations of BIRN’s TV show Justice in Kosovo, concerning the exploitation of gravel from rivers in Kosovo.
Vidov shared his experiences working on the investigative story “Captured by Gas,” an in-depth analysis of the quality of governance and state capture in the energy sector in Croatia.
The first awards ceremony recognising environmental reporting in Kosovo saw three stories given prizes, all of which were supported by BIRN.
The three stories were given awards for best environmental reporting at a ceremony on Tuesday by Cohu, the anti-corruption and good governance NGO.
The prizes were presented by Arton Demhasaj, the executive director of Cohu, who said that the media did not cover issues related to the environment enough this year, and that the awards ceremony was intended in part to raise awareness about this crucial issue.
First place was taken Koha Ditore journalist Besnik Krasniqi, for his article on air pollution caused by old cars. The article was an EU-funded project implemented by BIRN and the Association of Kosovo Journalists, AJK.
In his acceptance speech, Krasniqi highlighted the ongoing problem of air pollution in Kosovo. “Hundreds of deaths are caused because of pollution, including pollution that comes from cars,” he said.
Second place went to RTK journalist Edona Musa for her article on the illegal coal trade and the air pollution that results from the burning of coal, which is having deadly consequences. Musa’s investigation was also implemented by BIRN.
Receiving the award, Musa stressed that coal was still being extracted and sold illegally this winter. “Let’s hope that Kosovo institutions do their utmost to stop the burning of coal,” she said.
The third story awarded was by Drenushe Ramadani, a journalist from BIRN Kosovo’s site Kallxo.com.
Her article focused on the risks to rivers due caused by the construction of hydropower plants across Kosovo.
“I am happy about this first-ever prize on the topic that I love the most – the environment,” Ramadani said.
BIRN Kosovo and Democracy Plus (D+), with the support of the British embassy in Pristina, held a roundtable discussion on December 2 about a monitoring report produced by the two organisations on the integrity of Kosovo’s Tax Administration, TAK.
The report is based on nine months of direct monitoring between April and December 2019, and is the second annual report from the two organisations aimed at enhancing TAK’s integrity.
It was presented at the roundtable by Kreshnik Gashi, managing editor at Kallxo.com and anchor of the ‘Justice in Kosovo’ TV programme, and policy analyst Visar Rushiti.
Gashi said that as a result of both this project and reporting made to the Kallxo.com anti-corruption platform, citizens’ perception of TAK has improved. “During this year alone we have received over 100 reports on various tax evasion issues,” he said.
During the discussion, the director of TAK, Ilir Murtezaj, said that the organisation is preparing a working plan to increase the integrity of TAK. This will be carried out in cooperation with organisations outside TAK and with relevant institutions.
Jacob Webber, the deputy head of the British embassy in Pristina, highlighted that strengthening internal governance is a key step toward increasing taxpayers’ trust in the Tax Administration of Kosovo.
“From local and international reports it appears that the informal economy in Kosovo is very high, and this should be dealt with by the Tax Administration of Kosovo,” Webber said.
“The British embassy will be a long-term partner of TAK, for maintaining macroeconomic stability and combating the informal economy.” He added.
Hekuran Murati, representing Vetevendosje (Self-Determination), which is set to be the main party in the upcoming coalition government, said at the at the roundtable discussion that one of the main issues for TAK is personal income tax.
“Legislation needs to be changed, but not everything can be regulated by legislation, but through the will of each institution,” Murati said.
