TIRANA, Sept 29 /ATA/ The US Ambassador to Albania, Yuri Kim, in a televised interview on Thursday evening, focused among other things on the work of SPAK in Albania adding that SPAK has hit crime in our country.
“SPAK so far has a 90% conviction rate. In other words, when they indict someone, and they take that person or that entity to court, 90% of the time, there’s a guilty verdict, assets are seized, and people are put in prison. For the 12 years preceding 2019, the justice system, the special prosecutors here seized something like 20 million euros in assets, okay. In a period of over 10 years,” Kim said.
Since justice reform, since December of 2019, and through all of 2021, SPAK was able to seize more than 70 million euros in assets. Seven, zero. Seventy million euros. That includes things like buildings, businesses, cash in banks. So far, in 2022… So far, they have seized something like…For example, just in July, there was one case that produced over 10 million euros in seized assets. I don’t have the name of the case but it’s over 10 million in assets. And so, at this current trajectory, we think that in this calendar year of 2022, they will be seizing more than 70 million, so it will probably end up being closer to 100 million. SPAK now has 60 full time investigators right, and they have all received special training from the U.S. FBI in Quantico. SPAK is also hiring eight dedicated financial investigators. And so, what they are going to do is to look at where assets are hidden so that prosecutors can seize them.
And so this will really hit criminals in the pocketbook where it really counts. Since 2021, the number of investigations that SPAK is doing with EU countries has more than doubled. It has more than doubled with us. Now we’re going to have the Drug Enforcement Agency establish a presence in Albania. So, that’s very important. Okay, let me go back to your original point about not taking people who are in power…
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