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What did Niko Peleshi spend Albanian taxpayers' money on?
The Ministry of Defense has received a strong blow from the " Balkan Defense Monitor ", a project created with the support of Canada to monitor the military engagement of the countries of the region.
Recently, the report for the year 2024 was published and details are given on military training, but also the expenses or transparency of each state, with a focus on defense. The report is very critical when it comes to Albania, as it is the least transparent country.
According to the report provided by " Pamphlet ", the Albanian Ministry of the Interior hides everything, with no one knowing where the money of the Albanian taxpayers goes. The monitors of the report themselves requested data as part of the observation and the Ministry of Interior refused.
It took the commitment of the Commissioner for Public Information for Niko Peleshi to release some data, but even that was minimal. The report also states that Albania has given support to Ukraine, but everything is kept secret.
Excerpts from the report
· Albania initially refused to respond, but after a hearing initiated by the Commissioner for Public Information and Personal Data Protection, the Albanian MoI provided some of the requested data. All this has contributed to the assessment that Albania remains the least transparent country in the region.
· Croatia has the most transparent and disaggregated budget in the region, and is the only one that refers to specific procurement projects, while the Albanian budget is less transparent, with only seven general categories: Planning, Management and Administration, Military Forces, Education Military, Combat Support, Health Support, Social Support and Civil Emergencies. These budget programs are not separated and the amount of expenditure planned for categories such as personnel or weapons and equipment cannot be taken out of the budget. However, the Ministry of Defense publishes annual monitoring reports on the implementation of the budget, which are more detailed and contain references to specific projects within the seven budget programs, together with the expenditures for the mentioned projects. As these reports are published retroactively, with the last one published in August 2023, the level of transparency regarding the current and future budget is still low.
· Since the Ministry of Defense refused to respond to the research team's request for information which included a question about donations to the Ministry of Defense, there is no official information about donations received during the monitoring period. The Ministry of Defense website also failed to provide more information on the matter, so the research team relied on open source research. Albania has also reported sending financial and military aid to Ukraine, but the subject and value of the military donation is not disclosed.
· The Albanian MoD refused to provide data on its international military cooperation, so the research focused on public sources. The regional view is that the US and the EU were the dominant military donors to the countries of the Western Balkans
· The Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not provide data on the number of Albanian troops in international peace missions, therefore the research was based on open sources. In those cases where it was not possible to determine the exact number of troops, it was assumed that the number was the same as in 2022. / Pamphlet
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