TIRANA, Oct. 22 – Executing two separate Serious Crimes Court orders, Albanian police arrested former Head of Prisons Arben Cuko and former Socialist Party MP Arben Ndoka on Sunday evening on corruption charges and adverse possession respectively.
Both former lawmakers are being investigated by the Serious Crimes Court, as prosecution surveillance and investigations have led it to believe Ndoka and Cuko were also tied to the criminal arrests of the Avdyli criminal ring, which run a big network of drug trafficking throughout the country and abroad.
Sources at the prosecution said Cuko is alleged to have accepted a sum of money and a car in turn of moving Olsi Karagjozi, a sentenced contracted killer, from one prison to another, while the accusing body is investigating allegation for other violations including prisoner transfers.
Cuko was fired from his post since September 3 by Minister of Defense Etilda Gjonaj “for intolerable mismanagement and strong corruption doubts” and Stefan Cipa, former minister of interior took up his post.
Shortly after Cuko’s arrest came a reaction by the ministry of defense saying the legal action against him ultimately led to a deep administrative investigation.
“The government’s action line against corruption is clear: anyone who breaks the law will face justice. Without political, ideological or color distinction, anyone breaking the law is equal and will face it equally,” Gjonaj said.
The country’s Prime Minister Edi Rama also reacted to Cuko’s arrest through a Facebook post where he expressed pity for the measure, but added there cannot be two lines of action in report to the law.
Shortly after news of Cuko’s arrest broke out, it was reported former colleague and SP lawmaker Arben Ndoka and his brother were also placed under arrest among a group of other people after being accused of document fraud, stamp fraud and land adverse possession.
According to the police announcement, months of investigations and collected evidence led it to believe the criminal ring was involved in public land abuse in the Lezha and Kurbin areas, through document and stamp fraud.
Days after Ndoka’s arrest, local media reported the prosecution’s file for Ndoka was compiled from audio-surveillance that was conducted on the Avdyli family members, who wanted to invest their drug money on businesses at the Rana Hedhun area and found out the Ndoka family owns the entire coastal area.
From that point on, surveillance of the Ndoka brothers over their discussions with Real Estate Registration Office employees proved they had illegally taken huge amounts of property under their ownership.
Last March, the Lezha police investigated a criminal group suspected of abusing properties in the Shengjin area and in this context detained 12 persons, among whom the Lezha Mayor, and declared another 11 as wanted.
All of them are being accused of adverse possession of 234,548 square meters of coastal land in Lezha’s Shengjin.
Sources from the investigative unit and records of the prosecution’s surveillance tapes are have shown Ndoka and other Lezha officials have intervened in adverse possession of properties at Rana e Hedhun by passing them to the ownership of their relatives.
Ndoka’s name is not new to the courts’ circles, as his name received a bad reputation since 2014, when the Democratic Party published documents proving Ndoka had been sentenced with more than seven years of prison in Italy for prostitution charges and had executed part of his sentence in Albania.
Ndoka, who called the sentence ‘accidental,’ was released in 2005 and had been engaged with public administration services ever since, having worked even at the Guard of the Republic and the state police, both during the Socialist and Democrat governments.
However, in September 2015, Ndoka resigned his MP mandate under the decriminalization law, which sought to oust all officials who had committed crimes and were sentenced in the past.
Ndoka was even mentioned in the 2015 US State Department report on Human Trafficking, although without being mentioned by name, while former US Ambassador to Albanian Donald Lu has said it is shameful an individuals who once trafficked human beings has a seat at the Albanian parliament.
