While Kosovo's Special Prosecution is knocking on the doors of top state officials with handcuffs and court orders, uncovering a €15 million fraud involving falsified court rulings and illegal property transfers, one cannot help but glance southward — toward Albania — where such scandals aren’t breaking news. They’re just Tuesday.
This week, the Prosecution in Prishtina requested pre-trial detention for several high-ranking officials from the Kosovo Archives Agency and the Kosovo Cadastral Agency, after uncovering a sophisticated scheme involving forged court documents and the illegal privatization of nearly 4 hectares of public land in Veternik, formerly owned by the RTP (Radio Television of Prishtina). The damage? A conservative estimate: 15 million euros.
The suspects include civil servants Zelije Shala, Mehdi Bahtiri, and Veton Bytyqi, who allegedly collaborated with attorney Venhar Hana and a private citizen, Slavica Mikic, to smuggle a non-existent 1976 court ruling into the national archive. Once planted, the document was given official stamps and used as a "legal" foundation to transfer state property into private hands.
And here’s the twist: even after the Cadastral Office in Prishtina twice rejected the transfer due to jurisdictional issues, the plot thickened. On May 16, 2022, the Legal Department of the Kosovo Cadastral Agency — conveniently headed by Bashkim Shaqiri and legal officer Mejreme Bajrami — reversed the decision, green-lighting the theft in broad daylight.
In response, prosecutors moved fast, citing risk of witness tampering and destruction of evidence — especially since the forged judgment has already been "mysteriously" erased from the official archives. A criminal conspiracy, plain and simple. And for once, the system is responding.
Now, if this had happened in Albania?
Let’s be honest: the only thing being detained would be your hope that anyone might face consequences. In Edi Rama’s Albania, such theft of public property would hardly stir outrage. It would more likely appear in glossy renderings on a PowerPoint slide titled “Strategic Investment Plan” — or even better, be immortalized as a "vertical forest" on the coast, with concrete roots and Swiss bank branches.
Forgery of court decisions? Please. Albania practically runs on legal origami, where court rulings bend and fold based on political convenience, and the National Cadastre looks more like a chessboard — just ask anyone whose house "accidentally" ended up inside a resort project.
Meanwhile, the same people who claim to fight corruption from podiums decorated with Rilindje slogans are often the architects of the schemes. It's not uncommon to hear an Albanian whisper, “That land was mine once,” only to realize it now belongs to a minister’s cousin, registered legally — overnight.
The tragic comedy is that in Kosovo, justice might eventually prevail. In Albania, the system doesn’t fail — it simply functions as intended. Which is to say: capture, cover, cement, and celebrate.
So, while Kosovo is prosecuting forged archives and corrupt bureaucrats, in Albania we’re still trying to figure out how an entire coastline is being "privatized" one secretive signature at a time — and how Edi Rama still manages to paint it all as “progress.”
Maybe one day, our prosecutors will surprise us too.
But until then, the real estate market remains the only thing growing faster than public cynicism.