“Pango, sex predator”

The details of this document were published on Wikileaks with the title “The ruling party, pitiless with dismissed minister. Less than one our after the broadcast of the video scandal, the Prime Minister Sali Berisha discharged Ylli Pango, the Minister of Tourism, Culture, Youth and Sports for having asked sexual favors in exchange of employment”, starts the cable dated 6 March 2009.

According to the cable, Pango’s dismissal put a humiliating end to the voices about Pango’s sexual abuses initially as a university professor and then as minister. The US report quotes the Parliament Speaker’s declaration, Jozefina Topalli, who invited the Parliament to vote Pango’s immunity removal.

The same cable analyzes the difficult position of the Prime Minister Berisha, who at the same time had the Foreign Minister getting ready to face trial for power abuse, and the former Defense Minister Fatmir Mediu under investigation for the Gerdeci tragedy. The US Embassy commented that this situation was damaging for the Prime Minister Berisha and Mrs. Topalli, who couldn’t afford another scandal on the verge of the general elections of June 2009.

The former ambassador writes that one day after the scandal was made public, Pango appeared on TV saying that the video was fake.  But most horribly, the cable adds, is that he said that anyone in his position would have done the same. According to Pango, everyone is prone to fall victim of sexual desires.

The US embassy also mentions the local opinion after the video scandal was made public: “He took what he deserved”, the cable underlines. The ambassador Withers describes Pango as a political figure that was notorious for asking sexual favors from students when working as a professor, and then from job applicants as a minister. He praises the Albanians for not tolerating such scandals from high-rank officials, emphasizing that Pango was Berisha’s third minister in less than one year who had been involved in a scandal of that scale. The cable returns later to the Pango case with a harsher title: “The rise and fall of a sexual predator”.

“The Voices that Pango had the behavior of a sexual predator had been circulating for years, but everyone was shocked when they saw it on audio and video, when he openly asked sexual favors from a young girl who was trying to get a job in the institution he managed”, the document stated.

Withers also mentioned the exploitation of the students for electoral campaigns when Pango was dean of the faculty and the plagiarism case of the book he published. Regardless this scandal, the US Embassy sees it with pessimism that Pango would be forgotten as a character.

“The most senseless part of this entire story is that it has started to fade out. He is still a Parliament Member, and maybe he will return to his university job and will still be involved in politics, as many other discredited politicians have done and are still doing in Albania”, concludes the comment of the Ambassador Withers.

A prophetical comment, since Pango returned to work in the state administration just one year after.

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