Gov’t to send capital amnesty draft law to Parliament
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TIRANA, April 20 - The Albanian government is planning to send the draft law on capital amnesty to the Parliament this week, which could be approved in May. Prime Minister Edi Rama announced on Monday that the amnesty could last up to 1 year, divided into three time periods of four months.
During the first four months, the obligation to deposit money is foreseen to be 5 percent of the total, during the second period it may be 7 percent and during the third, it may be 10 percent. However the numbers will be discussed further with stakeholders and parliamentary committees.
“Revenues from criminal activities and corruption are excluded. All those who are convicted for certain activities that are part of the criminal activity which is also subject to the special law and OFL are excluded from the amnesty,” Rama said. Politicians, judges and prosecutors will also be excluded from the amnesty.
With this initiative, Albanian passport holders can legalize undeclared property received or owned and related tax liabilities associated with formation/acquisition and usage of such property.
Former Democratic Party MP Jorida Tabaku described the government's fiscal amnesty as a 'big money laundering machine'. Tabaku said the capital amnesty is another initiative of the government to steal money and launder it and accused Rama of “slowly killing” the economy for seven years.
“[The government] wants to do a capital amnesty for the incriminated precisely when the country is included in the MONEYVAL gray list and when the EU has determined that one of the preconditions of Albania is to exit the list and to fight money laundering,” she said.
Capital amnesty is a procedure whereby the state recognizes the rights to property (including money, real estate and certain other assets) withdrawn from the lawful economic turnover with the purpose of concealment of income and/or property where the right to the property was not duly formalized/documented or property that was formalized/documented to an “improper person”.
The legalization of the Albanians' wealth is indeed a policy implemented by the Democratic Party (DP) government led by Sali Berisha in 2011. But then, as the opposition leader, Rama strongly opposed it.
Berisha invited Rama to vote on the capital amnesty, but he refused.
DP's government couldn't pass the law in the parliament, but Berisha authorized the Ministry of Finance to go on with the amnesty.
Under the 2011's directive, all individuals in the country and abroad, large and small businesses, had the possibility to declare their cash in the banks and do the same with their undeclared real estate. The cash would be handed over to the bank after completing a form and paying 3 percent of the amount, as a tax. Once the money was deposited in the banks they could freely be transferred abroad.
