Artan Lame passed away in Munich where he had gone for a heart operation. In March 2016, Artan Lame underwent an emergency heart surgery.

Lame was a political writer, scholar of Albanian history and an activist for the protection of the country’s cultural heritage.

In 2000, he was Director of Cultural Heritage Department at the Ministry of Culture. From 2000-2002, he was Deputy Mayor of Tirana Municipality and from 2002-2005, Deputy Minister of Territory and Tourism. Artan Lame will be remembered especially for his role as General Director of ALUIZNI (Agency of Legalization, Upgrading, and Integration of Informal Zones and Buildings) ( 2013–2019). Further on, he took over the State Cadastre Agency, where he worked until 2023, when he left for health reasons.

Beyond his public functions, Lame was a deep connoisseur of Albanian history and a prominent voice in the Albanian media with political writings that highlighted important historical events. A passionate collector of historical artifacts, he also contributed to the promotion of culture through exhibitions and documentary writings. Lame was a candidate for MP of the Socialist Party in the 2005, 2009, 2013 Parliamentary elections. And in the years 2011-2013, he was a member of the working group for drafting of the Socialist Party Program.

Artan Lame has left his trace as part of civil society and as a public official.

Public Activities

Vice President of the Albanian Collectors Federation

Representative of Albania, member of the “World Collectors Club”, Genoa

Corresponding member of the “Instituto degli studi Araldici”, Milan

Commissioner for Albania in the WPE “IBRA ‘99”, Nuremberg

CEO of the “Albanian Heritage Center”

Lecturer at Marin Barleti University, subject “Territorial Administration”

Publications

Weekly feature “Albanian and forgotten” in the magazine “JAVA”, (2005-2013).

Weekly feature “Albanian table” in the newspaper “SHQIP”, (2006-2013).

TIRANA in postcards until 1944, (group of authors) Tirana 2000

Albanian Medals (1914-1944) volume I, Tirana 2010

Albanian Medals (1945-2002) volume II, Tirana 2010

TIRANA, Plan, Building, Living, (group of authors), Wien 2011

Prince of Albanians, Tirana 2011

Pyramid of Tirana (jointly with Ardian Klosi), Tirana 2011

Awards

“Book of the year” award (2010) from MIC London for the book “Albanian Medals 1914-2002”

President of the Republic’s “Medal of Gratitude” for the activities of the 100th anniversary of Independence. /a.f/p.s./

PM Rama wrote in a post in the social media about the bad news of Lame’s sudden death.

“Unbelievable, but unfortunately true, the unexpected news of Artan Lame’s passing away. The news has left me speechless. I offer my condolences to the bereaved wife Mirela, their son and their family and mutual friends,” Rama wrote.

Lame died in Germany after a heart surgery. Artan Lame was an Albanian political writer, collector, scholar of Albanian history and civil society activist for the protection of Albanian cultural heritage.

During his career, Lame has been Director of Cultural Heritage at the Ministry of Culture, Deputy Mayor of Tirana Municipality, Deputy Minister of Territory and Tourism, General Director of ALUIZNI (Agency for Legalization, Urbanization and Integration of Informal Areas), General Director of the State Cadastre Agency. /k.s/a.f/p.s./

“They say “First in – first out”. So, if an employee of the Cadaster office is processing 5 different applications from citizens, he can no longer choose to complete the one he likes; now the electronic system does not allow to continue today’s application without evading yesterday’s”, he said.

Lame said that, “This is the last adjustment that was applied to the cadastral services system”.

“It has been operating for about a month and has given its results in improving the time of service delivery. The application of this rule brought to our attention a new problem. Until yesterday, if you had an emergency, all you had to do was ask your friend to take care of it within a day. Now, with the new system, there was no way God would do anything to get it out of the line, because as I have said before, “the computer has no friends”, he said.

But, Lame said that the problem remained, as there will always be citizens or subjects who, for one reason or another, need to be served out of their turn.

Under these conditions, a new service called ‘Application with accelerated procedure’, was prepared and has been in operation for a few days now. So the citizen who needs to complete within 48 hours, a normal service with a 10-day deadline, now it is enough to select the AAP service while completing the application procedures and the service will be provided within 48 hours. Of course, this service has an additional: It costs more than the normal service”, he said.

Lame informed that, “During this week, accelerated services were applied to the system of notaries, which cover approximately 50% of citizens’ services”.

“This period also served as a trial period for improvements and validation of procedures. From next week, accelerated services will be extended to all citizens. With the application of accelerated services, the phase of innovations planned and implemented during the years 2021-2022 for the quantitative improvement of services in the Albanian Cadaster is completed,” he said.

According to Lames, in 2023 the next phase of changing the face of the institution begins, where we will deal with the qualitative improvement of the services provided, and there is still much to do. /p.s./

In a statement to the media, Lame emphasized that, “As long as the old Property Registration Office was based on handwritten papers, such things could exist.”

“But, now that we are in the age of the computer, we have two things that have changed: First, the computer cannot be corrupted and it shows immediately when something goes wrong; Second, the computer leaves a trace, since every action on the computer has a date, hour, minute and second, as well as the name of the person who did the action,” said Lame.

The head of the Cadastre pointed out that in all kinds of forged documents are starting to get stuck in the network of the electronic system.

“We have identified such cases in some of the regional directorates of Tirana, Kamza, Fier and Durrës. All these cases identified so far will be reported by name and surname to the respective Prosecutor’s Offices and those who have committed them will have to answer for the actions they have taken. I have not tolerated any identified case of internal employees of the Cadastre, so I am going to tolerate property abuses committed by outsiders even less,” added Lame.

Lame called on the masses of honest citizens to be careful when buying property or carrying out actions with their property.

“Not every piece of paper that is handed to you by all kinds of double dealers is a certificate of ownership. In all cases when you need to do such actions, turn to your trusted lawyer or notary, as these are persons who bear legal responsibility for the action they perform. Above all, apply to the Cadastre offices to request preliminary information, which is the safest,” said Lame./k.s/j.p/p.s./

General Director of the Cadastre Office Artan Lame said that, “Some time ago, the Albanian Government, in support of the State Agency of the Cadastre, approved the financing of the scanning and digitization of the cadastral archives. Today, we are in Lushnja to see the completion of the first phase of this process”.

“With the creation of the Digital Cadastre Center, there was completed the first phase of the digitization process for Lushnja municipality. This process means scanning all the references of all the properties in this city, their administration on a digital server with the aim of preserving and transparency of information”, emphasized Lame.

“The volume of work that this process entails is truly impressive. Suffice it to say that only for Lushnja were processed: 122 Cadastral Zones; 710 Volume; 92,000 property references; 163,000 digitized property cards and 1.5 million scanned documents.

Lame pointed out the benefits that the completion of this process brings to the citizen, such as the increase in the accuracy level of the information received, the increase in the speed of the service data and the increase in property security.

“Citizens will no longer have the Cadastre in front of them, but they will have a system that has everything transparent in its digital archives, and with one click you will have the property act on your phone. From now on, there are no more paper registers where from time to time there used to be found torn pages. Every action being digital implies it is traceable and identifiable”, underlined Lame.

He said that this process will also be completed in the municipality of Tropoja within this year.

“The next phase will be the completion of this process for Durrës (including Kavaja) and Tirana (including Kruja), where so far there has been carried out the scanning of about 5.5 million documents, or about 50% of the entire volume of work, Lame added.

Lame said that, “It is a question of very large numbers, which also requires such voluminous treatment. Suffice it to say that every day at the Digital Cadastre Center there are digitized 4,000 cards and are scanned about 54,000 property documents”./k.s/p.s./

Speaking to reporters today, Head of the Albanian Cadastre Artan Lame gave details about the property revaluation process, saying that there were included 168,200 properties and 113,000 families.

The property revaluation process was opened in February 2020, extended by law 164/2020, extended again by normative act 35/2021 and closed at the beginning of July.

For the first time, this process was done in 2011 and over the years there has been a different level of the revaluation tax as in 2011 and 2012 it was 1%, in 2013, 2016 and 2017 it was 2%, while in 2020 and 2022 revaluation tax was 3%.

Lame emphasized that the process carried out this year holds the record for the number of citizens who participated in it.

Specifically, there were included 168,200 properties and 113,000 families received the revaluation document.

Head of Cadastre said that Tirana holds the record with 47,293 revaluations carried out and Hasi is in last place with 35 revaluations.

Lame underlined that from this process, income in the state budget reached 12.7 billion ALL (about 110 million USD).

Focusing on the benefits of the property revaluation process, the head of the Cadastre emphasized that they are both social and economic. Also, the benefits are both for the citizen and for the state itself.

“Through the revaluation process, the value of the citizen’s property increases, according to the minimum fiscal price set by the state or according to the market price. The sale of a property is cheaper for the citizen’s pocket, thus bringing a considerable economic benefit (paying only 3% tax on the income from the sale from 15%, this is not a small difference)”, explained Lame./p.s./

Speaking to reporters, Lame stressed that following this inventory, we have a clear and accurate corpus of all lawful Land Acquisition Acts issued over the years, starting in 1991, after the fall of communism.

He stated that all assets identified as having problems will be blocked.

According to Lame, out of 116 thousand assets in the region of Tirana, only half of them are registered.

Lame assured that now no one can produce fake documents anymore in the hope that he will find a way to include them in state registers.

Lame focused on the situation found with the registers in Tirana.

“Out of 2342 registers, only about 250 result without damage. The others, about 2100 registers, are damaged by tearing, removing sheets, changing pages, etc. “, said Lame.

Drawing a parallel with the situation identified in Durrës, Lame said that the problems are more or less the same as in Durrës, but in the case of Tirana, with a weight approximately 4 times lower in numbers.

According to him, the most damaged registers are those related to assets in the developing areas of the capital, such as: Farka, Kashari, Yzberishi, Mëzezi, Baldushku, Sharra. Ndroqi, Peza-Helmesi, Peza, etc.

Lame added that it is difficult to find the culprits of this whole situation.

According to him, the final solution to this situation will come through the process launched this year with the support of the government for scanning and digitalization of the archive.

The head of the Cadastre informed that the inventory process will continue with other cities because according to him, “The example of Durrës and Tirana showed that through this process has increased exponentially the safety of citizens for their properties and has also increased the number of services provided by these offices”. /j.p/p.s./

During the national anti-corruption conference, “Increasing the transparency and effectiveness of public administration: Using digital tools to improve service delivery to citizens”; Lame said that there is no more any change of land ownership”.

“Basically, there have been two forms of corruption in the Cadastre: petty corruption, which is related to the speed in dealing with cases, and large corruption, which is related to the alienation of property, which has fundamentally destroyed the system. I say, responsibly, that in over 99% of cases it does not happen anymore, due to digitalization and making clear the work schemes in the system “, stated Lame.

Lame noted that one of the factors of the country’s economic stalemate in these last 30 years has been the Central Real Estate Registration Office, because of the alienation of property.

According to Lame, changing this image has been and remains a difficult task.

Lame stressed that the time of providing services to citizens has decreased significantly, specifically from 101 days has gone to 22 days./r.e/p.s./

After the appearance of an employee of the Cadastre office in Saranda on TV investigative show while he cheated a citizen, Lame said that only the system will eradicate corruption.

“I want to address every Albanian citizen and apologize on behalf of the Institution that I have been running for almost three years. I also apologize to every honest and humble employee of the Albanian Cadastre, whose work should not be spoiled by such cases. Thanks to the media and investigative shows in particular”, said Lame.

“During 2022, I say that 35 employees have been fired, from simple specialists to regional directors. At least, there have been 8 cases of abuse of office or property which have also been reported to the prosecutor’s office.  There have been taken 102 administrative measures for various employees”, said the head of the Cadastre.

The head of the Cadastre, Lame said that offering of online services are an epoch-making reform.

“What is happening with online services is epoch-making as a reform. This is because man can be corrupted, but not the system. The more we move in this direction, the less we will have the bad luck to hear cases like that of the Saranda employee”, he stressed.

Lame appealed to every Cadastre employee not to abuse their duty by being lured by money.

Lame also called on citizens to trust the Albanian Cadastre. /a.a/p.s./

During a press conference from the regional directorate of the Durrës Cadastre, Lame said that out of 1063 registers only 152 real estate registers are in good condition.

“According to the report compiled by a group of experts, after the inventory of the inherited archive, it turns out that there are 1063 registers. Only 152 real estate registries are in good condition. About 908 registers appear to have been touched and experienced changes. 730 sheets are missing in these registers”, declared Lame.

Lame also spoke about restraint and lack of support from certain persons not to make the inventory of the inherited archive.

The head of the Albanian cadastre further informed that in addition to the missing pages there are also pages overlapped 2 or 3 times.

Lame said that the most problematic registers are those of the coastal area, the area of ​​Spitalla, Lalzi Bay, Rodon, etc.

He stressed that the responsibility belongs to everyone who has worked in these offices for 32 years.

Further on, Lame said that the report issued by the group on the inventory of the Durrës real estate archive will be submitted to two other institutions, the Ministry of Justice and the government.

According to him, the entire archive of Durrës will be scanned and digitized. This process, he stressed, will be extended throughout Albania, starting initially with Durres, Tirana and Lushnja. /a.a/p.s./