SPAK chief Klodian Braho: We will carry out the arrests ourselves! New strategy for election crimes

Klodian Braho, head of the Special Prosecution Against Organized Crime and Corruption, said that SPAK will carry out its own operations to arrest wanted individuals.

During a hearing at the Electoral Reform Commission, Braho acknowledged the opposition’s concern that wanted persons are not being detained and are influencing elections, noting that this is also a concern for prosecutors themselves.

“Just as this is a troubling phenomenon for you, it may be for us as well. Because we also have some wanted individuals subject to security measures in absentia, or convicted in absentia, decisions that have not been enforced, and this is a real concern. I do not want to make something public today, but what I want to say is that we are considering a different institutional response from SPAK in order to be able to carry out these specific actions of an operational nature ourselves,” said Klodian Braho, head of SPAK.

The head of SPAK said the prosecution is also looking at the possibility of carrying out wiretapping through its own investigators.

“For carrying out the wiretapping of individuals in public places, SPAK is dependent on other institutions, mainly on the General Directorate of the State Police. SPAK aims, within a short period of time, to recruit services and further train investigators so that in the field we are able to carry out these actions ourselves,” Braho added.

During the meeting of the Electoral Reform Commission, SPAK chief Klodian Braho said that in the past year, which was an election year, 194 case files were handled, and of them, 5 proceedings were sent to court.

These figures did not convince the opposition, which said the situation of election-related crime in the last 3 elections has worsened.

“The impunity felt by high-ranking political and state officials, who gain power through vote-buying and then use that power to buy votes, is the main and strongest generator of high-level state corruption,” said Oerd Bylykbashi, PD co-chair on the Electoral Reform Commission.

“Not everything can be expected from a single institution. Could we have done some things better? Certainly! We could have been better organized, more proactive, better at planning, etc. But this is where we are currently, and what we need to do is address those organizational shortcomings or resource deficiencies,” Braho replied.

Braho asked Parliament and the Electoral Reform Commission for several legal interventions that would help the prosecution in the battle against election crime.

The head of SPAK called for tougher legislation regarding penalties for election crimes, as an analysis of sentences for this criminal offense over the past 5 years shows that people who committed these crimes benefited from alternatives to prison sentences.