Fiks Fare program on Top Channel reported on Tuesday evening a scandal in the city of Lezha in the northwest of Albania, where the citizens trying to register their property were threatened with their lives by civil servants of the cadaster and a known family of area.
Arben Staka and Luigj Leka complained to the newsroom of the investigative show that after denouncing to the police the abuses of the managers and former managers of the Lezha Cadastre for the registration of a property, were threatened by the officials. Two hours after the report, one of the whistleblowers, Arben Staka, was called by the widow of Ardian Nikulaj, a known local business figure, to meet them at her bar in Shengjin. In the premises, Arben meets the director of the Cadastre, Aris Mema, and the former director Gentian Malotaj, who ask him to withdraw the report.
“I denounced the directors, they threatened me!”
Arben Staka confessed to the Fiks Fare show: “My family bought a plot of land and a house in the area of Shengjin, Lezhë, with a notarial contract. The seller is Ndue Leka and the buyer is Agustin Staka (the whistleblower’s brother). We wanted to register this property in the Cadastre, but we learned that some of our cousins had registered it in their name. They had even registered the part we bought. They had their share but it was well defined and divided. They had registered them in the Cadastre, even the part belonging to the Leka and Staka family”, said the informant.
In this meeting, I was asked to withdraw the report I had filed with the Lezha Police. Vera Nikulaj made this request to me, while the director and former director admitted that they were wrong to register that property. I have recorded this conversation, where I was threatened that if I do not withdraw the denunciation, the children and family members of the deceased Ardian Nikulaj ‘would have business with me’. Then Vera Nikulaj offered me 100,000 euros as a guarantee that she would take care of fixing the problem, I just had to withdraw the police report”, claimed Arben in an interview for Fiks Fare.
On the same day, all the characters of the first meeting, the informant Arben Staka, Vera Nikulaj, Gentian Malota, Aris Mema and some lawyers and relatives, go to meet the other informant, Luigj leka, in a bar at the entrance of the city of Lezha. Vera and the directors also ask him to withdraw the report. They argue again and that Vera tells him that “she is in it and there is a guarantee that the land will be returned in the Cadastre, as it has been”. But the parties do not find a solution. Meanwhile, the director Aris Mema tells him “I can go to prison, but your matter will not be resolved for 6 years”.
According to him, it is better to fix it now and withdraw the report than to end up in the prosecutor’s office and court with criminal proceedings. However, the whistleblowers did not withdraw whereas Aris Mema from July 2024, who was an employee at the prosecutor’s office, was re-appointed director of the Cadastre, in the same position.
Top Channel
