TIRANA, Jan. 17 – The vetting process of judges and prosecutors began this week with the Independent Qualification Committee shortlisting 36 judges and prosecutors to be vetted.
The committee said procedures toward the subjects who will be vetted have already begun through a statement released in its official webpage.
In addition, the committee made public the names of the 36 above-mentioned judges and prosecutors in the same statement.
John Leonardo, who is part of the International Monitoring Operation (IMO) which supports the re-evaluation of judges and prosecutors in Albania, told an American media outlet this week he believes the country will rid itself of corrupt judges and prosecutors within the next year.
According to Leonardo, Albanians show trust towards the judicial reform and the internationals monitoring its process.
He added the vetting is the main way to leave behind decades of a corrupt judicial system.
Leonardo served as a Pima County Superior Court judge for 19 years before taking over as U.S. Attorney for Arizona in 2012, working as the state’s top federal prosecutor before quitting five years later when Trump took over as the country’s president.
During his interview, he tells how IMO, which is made up of eight international experts including Leonardo, was established after the Albanian parliament amended its Constitution aiming to realize the judicial reform.
“The first hearings are likely to be in the latter part of February. They’re assuming this process will take four to five years. It’s hard to imagine what it’s going to be like when the hearings start, because it’s going to be more intense,” he told the Tucson, Arizona newspaper.
The main obstacles of the vetting process mentioned by him are judges receiving bribes to dismiss charges against people, being paid to take a side in civil cases, freeing defendants who are wanted for extradition and judges who appear to have assets worth five or six times more than what they earn.
“Judges, in this country, for the last 10 years or so have had to make financial declarations of what they own, what their assets are, but we find they claim to live somewhere much more modest when they actually live somewhere much more lavish,” he added.
Nonetheless, Leonardo mentions the support of the Albanian people as a very important asset in the fight against a corrupt judicial system.
Albania’s judiciary reform was set as a key condition by the European Commission in order to initiate accession talks for Albania’s road to the EU.
The implementation of a long-awaited justice reform approved in consensus in mid-2016 is also the key reform foreign investors have been demanding from Albania where the judiciary is perceived as highly corrupt, undermining investor confidence.
