A few days ago, after the clash of two businessmen over a property in Dhërmi, Prime Minister Edi Rama said during a meeting with his close confidants that the mortgage, one of the most important, denounced and corrupt branches of government, was controlled by crime. Rama’s capitulation statement comes after 13 years of reforms, initiatives, changes, platforms, mergers, divisions, promises, etc., to ‘heal’ the Mortgage.
After 13 years in power, mortgage corruption has only been structured, corruption fees have been increased, increased and detailed, while this state institution has been completely criminalized. The heads of the mortgage branches up to the specialists are mostly sponsored appointments of organized crime, of the criminal groups that SPAK has hit, of oligarchs, former ministers and some deputies. Kupola acts under the orders of these factors to copy legalization files for their account, while for other files it applies corruption fees.
A saga of whistleblowing and whistle-blowing shows a pair as one of the most illustrative examples of mortgage fraud. It is about Eni Sejdinaj, director of the Local Directorate of the State Cadastre Agency (ASHK) Tirana Rurale 2, part of a SPAK file for alienation of property, corruption and misuse of duties, as well as her ‘pelivan’, Armando Skarra, who operates mainly in the copying of papers for Sejdinaj’s jobs and orders.
How he escaped arrest and relapse
Eni Sejdinaj, investment of a line of corruption and criminal clan in the Tirana Mortgage, escaped arrest by SPAK in 2021, as part of the investigations for a group of 17 people, accused of corruption, abuse of office and alienation of property. In 2022, SPAK closed the investigations and took the defendants for trial to GJKKO. Sejdinaj temporarily left the post to ‘systematize’ her case.
Since SPAK did not file charges for a criminal group and Sejdinaj was only accused of abuse of office, her case was sent for jurisdiction to the Prosecutor’s Office of Tirana. She, with the intervention of the criminal-corrupt clan that overpowers her, is known to have closed the case easily, perhaps with the fee of a legalization in public spaces with her ‘dolphin’, Armando Skarra.
In her place, at the head of the Local Directorate of the State Cadastre Agency (ASHK) Tirana Rurale 2, was placed the property lightning rod Eris Shehu, former director of ASHK Fier. Shehu made several ‘big hits’ in cooperation with Lorena, with illegal alienations and legalizations, but it seems that he closed the chapter when he was arrested for alienating property in Seman, when he was running the Fier Cadastre, on behalf of an organized crime figure in Fier.
Shehu’s baton was taken by Eni Sejdinaj before his arrest again, who through her “cheekiness” finalized the legalization of buildings and businesses in properties and public spaces against payment, alienation of properties, legalization of constructions outside of any legal term and in flagrant violation of the law on legalizations, legalizations with forged documents, manipulations, refusal to appeal final decisions, displacement and other frauds with properties.
Several law enforcement institutions have been alerted to the illegal practices and corrupt episodes of the Sejdinaj-Skarraj duo, but apart from SPAK and BKH, no other institution moves in the face of illegalities. According to sources, ASHK’s ‘butterfly’ and its ‘pelivani’ are part of another SPAK investigation for corruption, property alienation, criminal group and money laundering, which is expected to be finalized with mass arrests.
Corruption charges
If previously the corruption fee was applied for any normal administrative action for property legalization, in recent months an unusual fee has also been imposed, specifically for the service of issuing invoices for mortgage fees. The standard fee for a property legalization is from 5 to 15 thousand euros, while for land and land with priority around Tirana and the coast it is 50 to 200 thousand euros per plot.
For a property registration, the corruption fee is 2 to 5 thousand euros. Even to get the ownership certificate, the corruption fee is 2-3 thousand euros. To obtain the legalization permit for priority areas, the corruption fee is 5 to 15 thousand euros. For each administrative action in the framework of completing the file, the corruption fee is 1 to 2 thousand euros. Even to cut an invoice, as we mentioned above, there is a corruption fee, which ranges from 200 to 300 euros.
Own property
Mortgage fraud is not abstract or an invisible virus, but has concrete names. The key people in mortgages have not slept, they have worked day and night, not for the citizens, but for themselves, copying the papers to transfer public and private properties in their own names and in the names of their family members. In addition to the undeclared corruption fees for a right that belongs to the citizens, the mortgage ‘wolves’ have turned into property buyers from Tirana to the coast, alienating and appropriating properties.
