Prosecution investigations are bringing to light schemes where officials and former officials of the Cadastre are suspected of having used their duties to register, alienate or transfer properties through forged documents and illegal procedures. The files no longer speak of isolated incidents, but show a recurring problem within the institution. Even the European Commission has listed Cadastre among the sectors with a high risk of corruption.
Corruption seems to have become the most serious wound of the Cadastre. Arrested directors and former directors, employees under investigation, forged documents, alienated properties and thousands of hectares of land under sequestration accompanied each other in the files opened by the justice bodies. The names change, the cities change, but the suspected mechanism repeats itself: property documentation is manipulated and then passes through the hands of officials who must guarantee its legality.
The problem has reached such proportions that the Cadastre has been identified in the documents of the European Commission among the sectors with a high risk of corruption, for which special preventive measures and strengthening of control are required. The assessments of Brussels take on a different weight when they are placed in front of the concrete files that Albanian justice is opening one after the other.
The most recent case is that of Fier. The prosecution suspects that two falsified decisions of the former Property Return and Compensation Commission were used to register large areas of land in Seman, Seman i Ri and Sheq Marinas. The investigation led to the seizure of 76 assets with a total area of about 1,143 hectares, as well as 150 thousand euros.
Former managers of the Cadastre are also included in this file. The Court of Fier imprisoned Ertis Shehu and Bardhyl Kapaj, as well as the lawyer Piro Çela, while for the businessman Kastriot Hasko, the security measure was changed from “prison arrest” to “house arrest”. The Prosecution’s suspicions are precisely related to the use of falsified documentation and the actions taken for the registration of properties.
But before the echo of Fier was closed, Durrësi had produced another file. The Prosecutor’s Office issued 12 security measures in an investigation into a suspected property alienation scheme, involving former employees of Hipoteka and suspected beneficiaries. The investigation includes allegations of falsification of documents, fraud, abuse of office and laundering of proceeds of crime.
Meanwhile, in Dibër, another action hit almost the entire structure of the local branch, where 14 arrest warrants and restrictive measures were issued. There it was discovered that cadastral officials, in collaboration with a notary, had altered state records to transfer important properties to the ownership of a single family, leading to the suspension and arrest of most of the staff.
Investigations by the Special Prosecutor’s Office and local prosecutor’s offices have revealed that abuses of legalization permits and mortgage registrations extend across the country, involving officials at various levels who have taken bribes or abused their office.
SPAK itself has extended the investigations to the management links of the Cadastre and to some local directorates. According to the materials published for these investigations, the verifications have affected Tirana, Durrës and other cities, with a focus on the practices of registration and legalization of assets.
So we don’t just have a history of “property problems”. We have an institution where the property registration mechanism itself has repeatedly appeared in criminal files, with suspicions that forged signatures, seals and documents have been used to change ownership and create illegal benefits. When similar cases are repeated in several directorates and in different periods, the question is no longer only which official will be arrested next, but how deep corruption has entered the structure that administers the property registry in Albania.
And while the investigations, arrests and files for forgeries and alienations continue below her, Lorena Goxhobelli is at the head of the State Cadastre Agency. During the time she was in charge of this department, there were only affairs, scandals and endless abuses. Will the day come when she also gives an account?/ Pamphlet
