Constitutional Court on sequestered assets of terror funder’s collaborator

TIRANA, April 10 – The Albanian Constitutional Court ruled that the country’s Supreme Court should reopen the case of an Albanian-based company whose assets were seized for alleged links with a suspected al-Qaeda collaborator, officials said. Albania’s Supreme Court is now obliged to judge whether the company should be considered as a collaborator of a terrorist funder and its properties be sequestered. The Constitutional Court said the verdict of the Supreme Court violated the company’s constitutional right of following a legal process on its property. It said the Supreme Court should reconsider a 2005 verdict on sequestering property of a company considered as linked to a fugitive Saudi businessman suspected of laundering money for Osama bin Laden’s terror network was correct, its press office said on Tuesday.
The Supreme Court had decided in 2005 that the case of the Albanian International Investment & Development Co. company was not under its jurisdiction but at the United Nations. In December 2004 authorities sequestered assets of Yasin Al-Qadi, who had been under investigation for money laundering, and also those of the Albanian International Investment & Development Co. company as a collaborator.
Al-Qadi, who left Albania several years ago, is on a U.N. sanctions list requiring all U.N. members to impose a travel ban on him and block his assets. The European Union and the United States have also frozen his assets. The Albanian International Investment & Development Co. had created a joint company with al-Qadi’s one owning a number of assets sequestered by Albanian authorities.
Last week Albanian authorities opened an investigation into Hamzeh Abu Rayyan, a Jordanian, for allegedly funding al-Qadi’s terrorist group. Rayyan was ordered to remain in Albania while the investigation was under way and had to surrender his passport, but he has not been charged with any crime.
Albania has also blocked the bank accounts, investments and other assets of other Arab citizens living and working in Albania and Islamic civic organizations accused by the United Nations of funding terrorist activities. The government has also passed laws allowing it to seize assets believed to be linked to terror financing.