Chief of General Staff resigns

01/11/2013 00:00

Xhemal Gjunkshi, Chief of General Staff of the Albanian Armed Forces, has submitted his request to resign.

Sources from the Presidency confirmed for Top Channel that the President has received his resignation note. Sources from General Gjunkshi confirm that the resignation has been requested by the Minister of Defense, Mimi Kodheli.

Although the Ministry of Defense has not given any notification about Gjunkshi’s request, it seems that one of the causes that drove the Minister to make this request, is Gjunkshi’s mentioning in a series of documents published by wikileaks in 2011.

According to Wikileaks, the United States Embassy was reporting in Washington that Gjunkshi, then Chief of the Commando Regiment, received bribes to appoint military men in peace-keeping missions abroad, mainly in Iraq. The payment was 7000 USD, almost half of the pay that they would receive for their six-month long mission, according to the cable published by Wikileaks.

The group of officers who accused Gjunkshi through a confidential letter, which was quoted in the cable, says that they have notified the highest government leaders for this affair. Gjunkshi rejected the accusations by that time, saying that they were not founded.

Gjunkshi went against the previous government when they tried to turn the Military Home into a Democratic Party headquarters. Through a letter exchange between him and the Minister of Defense, Gjunkshi declared that this building could not be removed from the military’s inventory, since there were a lot of activities being held there and the building was functional.

But Gjunkshi’s position was not taken in consideration by the Albanian General Chief of Armed Forces, President Bujar Nishani, who signed the decision to remove the Military Home from the military inventory, and then it turned into the headquarters of the Democratic Party.

However, the former opposition, now the majority in power, did not see the cooperation with the general as an option that could continue, by taking the reports as argument and saying that Gjunkshi did not enjoy any more the liking of Albania’s strategic partners.

Top Channel