The Minister of Interior, Fatmir Xhafaj, signed a cooperation agreement with the Provisory Prosecutor General, Arta Marku.
Part of this agreement was investigating criminal groups, bu establishing special structures at local prosecutions, with the commitment of 30 Prosecutors.
The third part of the agreements includes crimes addressed to by article 135/2 of the Constitution, i.e organized crime and criminal accusations against the President, the Speaker, the Prime Minister and other high-level officials.
This is exactly the object of SPAC, the Special Prosecution Against Corruption, part of the judiciary reform and expected to fight corruption in the high-level judiciary, which has not been created yet.
The reason SPAC is not created is that their Prosecutors should be appointed by the High Council of Prosecution, which also has not been established yet.
Minister Xhafaj and the Provisory Prosecutor General Arta Marku have agreed to engage Prosecutors who will be vetted by the Prosecution General only, while the SPAC Prosecutors need to be vetted by the Vetting Process, part of the judiciary reform.
Five days after the signing, the Prosecutor must appoint prosecutors in these sessions, to undertake investigations against the organized crime, part of the “Force of Law” operation.
It is clear that the Interior Minister and the Provisory Prosecutor General are creating a pre-SPAC, a parallel structure that is not created under SPAC, the institution that will be part of the judiciary reform.
But what legal guarantees do these prosecutors offer, since they will be controlled by the Prosecution General in a time when the Prosecutor General herself has not gone through the Vetting process?
While SPAC now only exist on paper, it appears that the Interior Minister and the Prosecutor General are giving themselves competences that are not recognized by law.
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