FLASH
Shkruar nga Mero Baze
Citizens with Albanian passports who want to contribute to the DP must deposit their donations in the DP's coffers in Tirana and payments must be made from there. Anything else is a criminal offense.
The problem over Berisha's DP's $6 million contract with an American company is threefold. It is legal, it is moral, and it is political. The legal problem is dominant in every article of the contract.
The Albanian law on political party financing clearly prohibits any foreign entity from financing an election campaign. If the official statement of the DP that the financing was taken over by an Albanian-American foundation in the US is administered as evidence, it is a foreign entity and is legally prohibited from financing an election campaign in Albania.
Citizens with Albanian passports who want to contribute to the DP must deposit their donations in the DP's coffers in Tirana and payments must be made from there. Anything else is a criminal offense. It's more or less like Lulzim Basha's statement at the beginning of the debate on Russian funding, when he said that 500 thousand euros were collected by Albanians in the US, but when he was confronted with the law, he tried to forget what he had said. And the first to attack him later, when he broke up with Berisha, were precisely those who signed this contract, with the same typology of lies, which leads us to believe that Berisha also made that contract.
In the meantime, the problem of the first payment of 750 thousand euros at the time of signing this contract is even more acute. We must await its declaration to the CEC, how it was paid by the DP, and what the sources were, so that the scene of Lulzim Basha who said "I am not responsible for why someone paid 500 thousand euros on behalf of the DP" is not repeated.
To date, the contract only includes the name of Nuredin Seci, an electrician from Tropoja, passionate about mountaineering, who lives in New Jersey in the USA, who has no money for old age or for Berisha's DP. The only logical connection to him is that he is a member of the New Jersey Vatra Presidency, and the Albanian-American association that could be hiding behind the payment could be Vatra, an informal section of the DP in the USA.
If this is true, then there are broader legal implications and those in Tirana themselves are at greater risk, since Vatra is a subject of American law, not Albanian. It is a foreign subject to our law.
It is enough to remember that when Berisha was prime minister in 2012, he gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Vatra with a VKM to finance its pro-DP activity, which is also a thread that connects it to a conflict of interest where state budget money was used.
The amount paid on April 4 of 750 thousand euros faces strong legal prohibitions from the Albanian law on party financing and should be the subject of a serious investigation. And to think that all this is still a contract that does not include LaCivita. In this case, he either receives secret financing, or has another contract much larger. And this remains to be seen.
What is certain is that we are facing a public fraud regarding the way in which cash paid by a family sanctioned as "non grata" is being used to clean up the stain of "non grata" in an electoral campaign, where Berisha makes the poverty of Albanians the headline and exposes his hidden billions, earned from corruption in power.
Berisha's second big problem in this story is the moral problem.
The only way for Berisha to win the battle against sanctions from the US and Great Britain as corrupt, undermining democracy and blackmailing the justice system was to act as the victim of a conspiracy, even though this is not true.
As such, he should have ignored the history of buying “lost honor” with lek in the US and UK. He paid around 700 thousand pounds in the UK, approximately 1 billion Albanian lek, and lost that battle.
Now in the US he has paid the first 6 million dollars in the hope that they will save him from the shame with which they have branded him. His claim that his "Non grata" came from McGonigal who, another Tropojan, Agron Neza, paid him 200 thousand euros, and will be removed by another Tropojan, Nuredin the electrician who will guarantee 6 million euros, is banal and amoral.
A non-corrupt person cannot even pay 600 euros for a lawyer, let alone 6 million euros. The fact that he pays much more than that and is willing to pay millions more just to have his "non grata" removed shows not only his awareness of being corrupt in his family, but also his nightmare for his "non grata" children, so that at least they can take over the leadership of the party after him.
Finally, this is also a political problem, which is also interfering with relations within the corridors of the White House.
Berisha's lobbyist, who will receive the $6 million, Carlos Trujillo, has been an anti-Grenell fighter within the White House and managed to prevent him from running for Secretary of State, where he claimed to be more favored than Rubio.
By getting involved in the internal wars of the new government in the US, Berisha risks wasting the $6 million, as it could ignite old rivalries, becoming the cause of a new clash between them.
On the other hand, this gesture, namely the removal of a sanction with lek, embarrasses the US and creates the image of a corrupt government that solves every problem in exchange for lek.
This is a huge relief for any "persona non grata" sanctioned by the US. If Berisha gets away with $6 million that he can't show where he got it, Tom Doshi can get away with $10 million, much cleaner, since he has it in his bank account from his business.
The others on the list as well.
This not only makes the US authority ridiculous in the eyes of Albanians, but it emboldens anyone who risks being sanctioned in the future, as now everyone knows the price at which the stain is removed.
And in this regard, Berisha is doing honor to every sanctioned Albanian and every candidate for sanction in the future.
So, the only political effect that comes from this story is that it has emboldened every corrupt person in this country against the US and has made the US very ridiculous, like a paper tiger against corruption in this country.
This is the only political benefit that comes from this story. And it is no small thing for those who want power to steal.
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