TIRANA, May 31 – Elvis Roshi, mayor of Kavaja in central Albania, resigned on Tuesday upon ‘abruptly learning of a past conviction’, thus becoming the first public official to step down in the framework of legislation aimed at barring criminals from holding public office.
A name frequently targeted by the opposition as a person with a criminal past, Roshi confirmed his resignation through a status in social media, claiming he had been informed by his lawyers for a previous conviction for which he was ‘unaware’.
“My lawyers have informed me that I have been convicted in Italy while underage. I absolutely had no prior knowledge of this and I am shocked by the news,” Roshi wrote on Facebook.
The mayor of Kavaja went on to explain that he had never appeared in any court or detained for a sentence delivered by a juvenile court in Italy when he was sixteen.
All he could ‘remember’ was being accompanied by police once after ‘a massive brawl’ at a refugee camp he was residing at the time.
Roshi stated that in the light of fresh evidence it was impossible for him to continue his job as a mayor and that he was resigning from office.
While the now former mayor of Kavaja did not specify the nature of his conviction, local media have published documents which show that Roshi was convicted of sexual violence in 1992 when he was 16 years old.
Following Roshi’s resignation, Prime Minister Edi Rama defended his decision to pick Roshi as a mayoral candidate for Kavaja, previously considered as a stronghold of the right-wing Democratic Party, by reiterating that” he had a clean criminal record with the Albanian authorities when he was chosen to run as a SP candidate and that upon verification all public accusations against him had resulted unfounded”.
Rama also praised Roshi’s work as mayor, but argued that “whoever has a past conviction no longer enjoys the support of the Socialist Party whether to run or to remain in office”.
However, opposition leader Lulzim Basha claimed that PM Rama knew of Roshi’s past troubles with the law and chose him as a candidate regardless.
“This goes to show that criminal elements are everywhere in the state administration sponsored by Edi Rama. Elvis Roshi is proof that the decriminalization law works,” said Basha.
An initiative proposed by the opposition Democratic Party, decriminalization of Albanian politics had become an imperative as highlighted by the arrest of majority MP Mark Frroku, wanted for murder in Belgium, and the resignation of Arben Ndoka convicted on prostitution related charges in Italy, while another representative of the majority Armando Prenga recently engaged in an armed conflict in broad daylight.
Under the so-called decriminalization law, adopted last December, all public officials in the country are required to hand over statements over whether they have been convicted in the past or not as well as other names they have held, while many believe self-disclosure represents just the ‘tip of the iceberg’.
In fact, Roshi hadn’t declared this past conviction in the self-declaration form submitted with the Central Election Committee, the institution responsible for handling the forms.
He has justified omitting this information with the fact that he could not report a previous conviction for which he ‘had no knowledge about’.
Meanwhile, the General Prosecutor’s office has announced it has launched an official investigation against Roshi on forgery charges, which carries a penalty of up to four years imprisonment under the country’s criminal code.
Roshi, also appears to have changed his name from Ervin to Elvis, allegedly to hide past dirty deeds.
His name change was subject of debates in parliament with Socialist MP Ben Blushi publicly accusing Roshi of sending him a threatening text message containing inappropriate language.
In his self-declaration form, Roshi had also stated that he was detained in Germany “before 2002”³, but did not specify the reasons for his detainment by stating that “he did not remember” .
He has publicly maintained that he was detained and deported by German authorities as an undocumented immigrant.
This is Roshi’s second term in office as Kavaja mayor, representing the ruling Socialist Party. In 2015, he scored a landslide win over his rival, despite accusations of being involved in criminal activities in the past.
