Moisiu doesn’t fire Prosecutor-General

TIRANA, Albania (AP) – President Alfred Moisiu refused Friday to fire Prosecutor-General Theodhori Sollaku as the majority lawmakers had requested in their July report. At that time they voted to dismiss Sollaku after a two-month investigation accusing him of 80 offenses, including abuse of his position. The report also claimed that cases mishandled by prosecutors had forced the state to pay out US$20 million in damages to people who were jailed but later acquitted. But their request had to be decreed by Moisiu in order to become effective. Only lawmakers from Prime Minister Sali Berisha’s Democratic Party-led majority took part in July’s vote. The Socialist-led opposition boycotted it in protest of what they called a shoddy investigation. The opposition also accused Berisha of seeking to take control of Albania’s judiciary and other independent institutions.
On Friday Moisiu sent a letter to the parliament in which he said that the conclusions of the committee’s report were baseless and he did not see that Sollaku had violated the constitution. “The case of the General Prosecutor has preoccupied me quite a bit as a question of the inter-institutional relationships in a new and fragile democracy such as ours ,” Moisiu said in his letter. “I see the independence and balancing of the powers as a possibility to administer the state on the principles on which a state of law functions.” Moisiu said that the committee’s stand on Sollaku was “in violation of the constitutional principle of the separation of powers.” “An investigative commission cannot take on the attribute of the court,” he said. “I do not find such violations of law in the activity of the General Prosecutor as to constitute a case for his discharge as required by article 149, paragraph 2 of the Constitution. Thus, I decided not to discharge the General Prosecutor because the proposal for his discharge does not have support in the criteria and procedures provided in the Constitution and in the constitutional jurisprudence,” he said. “I want to ask the General Prosecutor publicly to continue work and to draw the proper conclusions from the constructive criticisms of Parliament and public opinion in order to reform the activity of the Prosecutor’s Office and raise it to the required level,” Moisiu told journalists a day later.
The decision sparked a flow of counterattacks first from Parliament Speaker Jozefina Topalli, then from Prime Minister Sali Berisha. They repeated their accusation that Sollaku was part of the Mafia crime rings and this time added to that the president as well.
Berisha on Monday launched a new effort to fire the prosecutor-general, asking a new investigative committee to check whether the official had links with crime.”The Prosecutor is part of crime,” he said asking parliamentarians together with the Justice Ministry that they “should consider creating an investigative group for the prosecutor, and if he has immunity to look for the possibility of lifting that immunity.” “Let this decree remain a historic accident that might slow a little but never stop the aspiration for European integration where a priority condition is to fight against organized crime and state capture,” said Topalli.
Sollaku responded by asking Berisha to send all information on the allegations to the prosecutor’s office on grave crimes, “a structure which the prime minister trusts.” If there is evidence, he said, that office should question him about it. Sollaku, who once served as Berisha’s political adviser, accused the prime minister of waging a political attack against him.