Courts in Kosovo problem with high-level corruption

The Organisation for Democracy, Anti-Corruption and Dinjitie “Arise” has today presented the report of one-year-old court monitoring in Pristina, Mitrovica and Gjilan, under which 15 cases of high-level corruption in which 140 persons are involved, and 13 of them high profile officials have been found.

During the year-long monitoring, Get up in partnership with the CSD has monitored 102 cases of 214 court hearings at the Founding Courts in Pristina, Gjilan and Mitrovica, with whom various violations have been identified in the judicial system in these three courts.

According to the findings, the identified violations are of technical and procedural nature, up to container ones.

“Director Arise”, Arton Demhaja, said that in addition to monitoring they have been intended to influence the increase in transparency of Kosovo's justice organs.

He said they have decided to build a database with the data of the issues they have monitored, which will be accessible to the public, with cases intended to affect even Kosovo's justice organs to follow such an example.

“Public has a lack of trust in justice institutions, all because the little image is broken in this respect. So our tendency has been to have such a project that urges me that courts in particular have the most available data. We first decided to build a database. Through this, both courts, the Judiciary Council and the Prosecutorial Council begin to build such a practice that all those documents that do not prevent human rights from being accessible and public and not need access to these documents”, Demhay said.

Genc Nimoni from the “Arise” said that for this period they have focused mainly on corruption and organised crime cases, as he said, they have used legal documents.

He is talking about the findings in each court, stressed that the Constitutional Court in Mitrovica, which covers branches in Leposaviq, Zubinpolt and Vushtrri have been dysfunctional for more than eight years.

“Based on organisational structure, this court covers branches in Leposaviq, Zubinpolt and Vushtrri. If we look at the story a little bit, then we note that you have entered the ninth year since the trial for the north in northern municipalities is closed. For five years we've had classes samples, and because of these problems we've had a lack of access to justice and violation of the rights for fair trial, which has affected the collection and re-editation of subjects”, he said.

Nimoni said that because of this lack of money, there has been a lack of a conclusion that, in addition to violations of human rights there have been.

Moreover, Nimon said that as far as corruption cases are concerned, what is worthy of its emphasis is that there is a positive trend of the prosecutor's settlement of cases from 2015 to 2016.

State prosecutor Alexander Lumezi said that the findings of year-long monitoring presented today are important and that they should not be seen as shortcomings, but as targets. He stressed that civil society and the judiciary may be the main factors of the best functioning justice system in Kosovo.

“I hope these findings will be in the function of selecting the difficulties that the judicial system has but also a benefit for the shortcomings found not to be repeated in the future. Civil society and the judiciary must act in harmony with each other and we can be the primary corrective, responsible for those who want to see the judicial system and prosecutors in our country fail. We need to keep in mind that the findings in the report are important and that we need to see as targets that in the future we have to improve through professional work and raise awareness of the most active role in respecting the procedural provisions in protecting the rights of parties in criminal procedure”, Lumez said.

According to him, fighting corruption and organised crime remains one of the main challenges of the judicial system and prosecution, and one of the fundamental obstacles to Kosovo's state development.

Otherwise, get up! And the CSD estimates that low sentences and, rejection of charges and qualified officials as senior profile officials, testify once again to the low degree of fighting and punishing high corruption in Kosovo.