Albania Ex-Deputy PM to Face Corruption Trial

Ilir Meta | Photo courtesy of MFA

The Supreme Court rejected on Monday an appeal from Meta’s lawyers to dismiss the cases on the grounds that the probe against the former deputy prime minister had started while he still enjoyed political immunity from prosecution.

Meta resigned after the broadcast earlier this year of a secretly filmed video in which he was seen discussing corrupt deals with another minister.

He has been charged with corruption and faces up to seven years in prison. Meta has denied wrongdoing and on Tuesday lashed out against the general prosecutor’s office, calling it “an extremist cell that was working to discredit him and his party”.

Meta compared the prosecutor’s office to the former Communist security agency, the Sigurimi, and vouched to reform it.  

Transcripts of the video showed Meta asking the former economy minister, Dritan Prifti, to intervene over a hydropower plant concession tender. He discussed a bribe by a businessman of a 7 per cent stake or €700,000.

Meta also asks Prifti to hire activists of his own party, the Socialist Movement for Integration, LSI.

The LSI is the junior partner in the government of Prime Minister Sali Berisha, and controls the ministries of economy, foreign affairs and health.

Although it only holds four parliamentary seats, the LSI came out as the kingmaker in the 2009 parliamentary elections, which were narrowly won by Berisha's right-wing Democratic Party.

Meta is head of the LSI and, at the time of the recording was deputy prime minister and foreign minister. The tape also shows him boasting about having influenced a Supreme Court trial, involving the same hydropower plant.

Meta is overheard saying that he can influence court decisions because he is on good terms with Chief Justice Shpresa Becaj, after having hired her daughter as a diplomat at an embassy.

He then asks Prifti to keep the affair quiet because he is afraid the prosecutor's office might open an investigation into it.

Becaj has denied any wrongdoing, maintaining that her daughter got the job on her own merits.

General Prosecutor Ina Rama filed charges against Meta in early May after a four-month investigation, following the broadcast in January of the secretly filmed video.

Meta says the video was heavily edited and that his words were taken out of context.

However, prosecutors maintain that they have been able to verify the video as genuine through the help of an American and a British expert.

Monday’s ruling by the Supreme Court also dismissed the expertise of the two foreign experts, arguing that it had been wrongly obtained by prosecutors.

The court said that prosecutors should have requested their expertise through a mutual legal assistance request.

Meta’s lawyers contested the decision to engage the American and British experts, saying the prosecutors should have used interior ministry experts to authenticate the tape.

Sources in the general prosecutors’ office,  told Balkan Insight that the ruling was "absurd", arguing that the penal code and the articles cited by the judges do not mention a need for foreign expert witnesses to be contracted through a mutual legal assistance request.

The US and British authorities had refused to provide assistance with expertise during the investigation, and case prosecutors had opted to engage independent experts.  

They same sources confirmed that during the trial the prosecutors’ office would ask the court to recall the same US expert who conducted the original expertise, Glenn Bard.

Meanwhile, the court is expected also to admit an expert witness from the defence concerning the authenticity of the tape.

As Bard is an independent expert who does not work for a US governmental agency, it is unclear how he could be called to testify through a mutual legal assistance request.

The corruption case against Meta is the first recent high-profile indictment of a government minister to go to trial; several other cases have been dismissed on procedural grounds under highly questionable verdicts.

In 2009, the court dismissed cases against former interior minister Lulzim Basha over alleged abuse of power in the buildig of the Albania-Kosovo highway. The court also dismissed the case against Environment Minister Fatmir Mediu over his role in the deadly blast on March 15, 2008, at an ammunition demolition depot, which killed 26 people and wounded more than 300.

The cases against Basha and Mediu related to their roles as ministers of transport and defence respectively in the previous government of Prime Minister Sali Berisha. Both have denied wrongdoing.

The decision of the Supreme Court has led some members of the legal community to describe it as out of control. The deputy head of the high council of justice, Kreshnik Spahiu, has called for a constitutional amendment to bring the court under the authority and the supervision of the council.

Nominated by the president and voted by parliament, Supreme Court judges are selected in Albania in a highly politicised procedure, with politicians squabbling over candidates that they see as close to their respective parties. If a judge is approved for a nine-year term he or she can only be dismissed by a non-confidence motion in parliament.

However, politicians are wary of bringing such motions, fearing that one day they may end up in front of the court themselves.