Albin Kurti's plan for seizure of property rejected, without bias

The system, which the Kurti Government is planning to apply for the seizure of property that will be deemed illegally acquired, is considered accepted by the Kosovo Institute for Justice.

Senior legal researcher at this institute, Gzim Shala, has said that Kosovo is neither ready to apply such a seizure system.

A concept-document adopted by the Government on Tuesday over this issue envisions the realisation of the seizure of illegal property even in the absence of a conviction act. For this seizure system, IKD says there have been many tests that give no green light to this way of combating unwarranted wealth.

“As far as the system of confiscating unwarranted property, or confiscating in civil procedure without going any way into criminal procedure, numerous studies and analysis have been conducted. These tests have highlighted the fact that the Republic of Kosovo is not ready to apply such a system”, Shala has told Express.

He stresses that the Kosovo Republic has two seizure systems: Traditional and advanced codification”.

The traditional seized “applies during the criminal procedure, and property proven by a criminal offense is confiscated. The advanced system concerns the seizure after the defendant is convicted. In this case, after a person is found guilty, the State Prosecutor has been terminated for five years to initiate the same procedure for confiscating unwarranted property. In this case, the burden of testing falls on the already convicted”, Shala said.

But, he adds, the “installation of a system for confiscating unwarranted property without a criminal process, in the case of the Republic of Kosovo, is unacceptable in two respects”.

According to him, even this system risks failing, as well as the two systems already in Kosovo.

The first “The first aspect is that since Kosovo has failed to seizure property through two (2) systems, even the third system (3) risks having the same fate”, Shala said.

The IKD's top legal investigator as another reason for this findings mentions the captured and persecuted justice system, which has also been named by the Vetevendosje Movement during its opposition.

The second “The reason is that Kosovo's justice system is seen as caught and easily influenced by politics. As a captured and persecuted system, Kosovo's justice system has been named by the ruling party itself. The same system will implement the unjustified seizure system. For this reason, since Kosovo does not pass a property system, Kosovo's justice system cannot give even more competencies to”, Shala said.

He stresses that the circumstances under which the justice system functions in Kosovo are not comparable to the states which already apply the seizure of unwarranted property.

The seizure system of unwarranted property seizure also works in other countries, but that the circumstances under which the justice system functions in these countries do not correspond to the circumstances under which Kosovo's justice system” is found, Shala said.

As to justify the concept-documet, Prime Minister Albin Kurti, the day after his adoption, said that a new prosecutorial agency would be formed for the seizure, taking an example in Great Britain.

This agency will be independent and will have the investigation into unwarranted civilian property. But even the new agency we intend to establish is not new and unprecedented. In Great Britain we have the Agency for Crime which is compatible with the tracking organs of”, Kurti said.

But according to the IKD, the Great Britain Agency, which refers to Kurti already does not exist because it has disappeared in 2013. Likewise, its successor agency, it says. KDI, does not correspond to what the agency that seized unwarranted assets in Kosovo should look like.

As far as the Great Britain's Heavy Crimes Agency is concerned, this Agency has disappeared in 2013, and it does not now exist. Its successor is the National Crime Agency. But that, the nature of this agency, does not correspond to the nature it wants and should have the Kosovo Agency regarding the seizure of unwarranted property. In the case of Kosovo, this agency will have a mandate only to list wealth and initiate cases in the court, but that the court will make the decision. Given the constitutional and legal provisions, for the very list of this wealth, the Agency in question will have many difficulties”, Shala from the Kosovo Institute for Justice said.

Regarding the government's accelerated initiative for establishing a law through which seizures of assets would be carried out, which would be considered illegally acquired, European Union spokesman Peter Stano has told Gazeta Express that Kosovo authorities should focus more on confiscating property considered illegal through criminal procedure, and should be very careful about confiscating property without prejudice.

This European Union stance comes a year after the EU had found many remarks in drafting concept-document, which had been ignored by Albin Kurti's Government.

Stano, has said the Kosovo government should respect the principles included in the Constitution and fundamental rights of individuals.

When Albin Kurti first came to power, Justice Minister Albulen Haxhiu immediately engaged in drafting the draft concept of property acquired unwarrantedly, which he had divided for public consultations on April 5, 2020.

The European Union had rejected the way Kosovo's new prime minister was trying to seize the property of all those who would be considered to have acquired it illegally. Through a unified legal opinion that two EU judicial organs had submitted last May 12th of last year to the Office of Prime Minister and Ministry of Justice, they had listed a series of remarks that had been found on the plan.

The EU said no revolution was needed in drafting the law on the seizure of illegal property. In the letter with comments from the EU, which has provided T7, there are not a few remarks on how the seizure of property considered illegally acquired. It mentions responsible organs that will deal with the seizure of wealth, personal jurisdiction, the burden of evidence, etc.