DW: Open clash between prime minister and prosecutors

Kosovo's Prosecutorial Council has strongly condemned statements by Prime Minister Albin Kurti, who accused the state judges and prosecutors of being old cases in support of crime. Prime Minister Kurti, through a videotape, accused the old and corrupt political <x0-5, its judges and prosecutors and the media misused for supporting crime, of turning the former corrupt and rotten system back. Albin Kurti's reaction came after the arrest of two senior government ministry and Trade and Industry officials Kurti and a businessman, under suspicion of misuse with state reserves, DW reports.

Prosecutorial Council opposes Kosovo prime minister's response

Kosovo's Prosecutorial Council nominated Prime Minister Kurti's statements to the prosecution institution and prosecutors as biased, false and lynching. In response, the “attack and lynching of the chief prosecutor and prosecutors with names and surnames is inlerable violation and failed attempt to intervene in the independent work of the State Prosecutor. “Call on the prime minister and ministers of his government cabinet to refrain from continuing blackmailing and subsequently derogatory statements against the Kosovo prosecutorial system in general and to the work of prosecutors in particular, trying to publicly lynch everything that concerns the prosecutorial system and the work of state prosecutors”, the Prosecutorial Council's response is said.

According to the Prosecutor's Council “these statements are completely negligible to the State Prosecutor, who is not influenced by political circles and interest groups, but as an independent and impartial institution in exercising his mandate would go to the end of every case with suspicion of misuse of public money and to the harm of Kosovo citizens, regardless of who he is, in what he believes and what he has done”.

Poland's oil and wheat field contracted

Arrested for misuse of state reserves, the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Enterprises are Hafiz Gara, director of State Reserves and Irfan Lipovica, director of the European Integration Department. The third prisoner is a businessman, Ridvan Muharrem. The Pristina Foundation Court assigned them the 30-day detention measure. The operation of their arrest followed the publication of several audio-incisions from the portal <x0 National>”, in which officials of the Ministry of Industry are heard, saying a contracted oil and wheat paid in Poland for state reserves never arrived. According to the prosecutor's file, the order of 200,000 liters of oil and 120 thousandkg of sugar at the price of 276 thousand euros has not come at all, despite the fact that the payments had become an advance.

Despite the fact that the advance-shaped payment has been realised overall in Kosovo, as a destination site, only 9,947.5 tonnes of wheat, or 52.5 tonnes less than the amount contracted. But the oil and sugar have not been brought in at all. As a result of these actions, public interest at an altitude of 601 thousand and 940 euros” has been damaged, the prosecution file says.

Reactions by Opposition

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti denied these charges and protected his ministry's contract on state reserves, said that “97 per cent of the value bought last year has arrived in Kosovo, including 99.5 per cent of the amount of grain already located in the warehouse at our site”. For the rest, “supply companies have an open obligation to fulfil the contract, and if they don't do this, there are legal procedures”, Prime Minister Kurti said, underlining that “has no corruption and misuse”.

The arrests of government Ministry of Trade and Industry officials Kurti prompted the reaction of opposition parties, which called for responsibility by the Kosovo government. The head of the opposition Democratic League of Kosovo parliamentary group, Arben Gashi, says that “except for the prosecution's criminal investigations, it is necessary to have parliamentary investigation into how closely the laws and procedures are respected on the issue of state reserves”. / DW