Prime Minister Edi Rama’s remarks in Parliament:

I took the floor to put emphasis on the extraordinary importance of one of the decisions this Parliament is about to make today and which has to do with the Anti-KÇK package of laws and the so-called KÇK group itself, i.e. the criminal organization currently operating within our justice system.
It is a fact that on this stage, while the ongoing justice system reform and the vetting process keep getting rid of the scumbag from the palace of justice, a part of the corrupt judges and prosecutors, who stand no chance of passing the vetting process and are well aware of this fact, have now entered the last phase of their shortened career due to the justice reform by speeding up incredibly their criminal activity.
It is a fact that the public opinion should continually get used of “accidents” of the clash between the law that is broken in the face of the machinery of crime and corruption in the justice system that is making verdicts, which really drive people to despair and are designed to kneel the public opinion down by issuing horrible rulings, either public or non-public ones, from the spectacular release of the prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment on murder charges to the scandalous alterations in the ownership of properties in the coastal areas.
To this end, we have decided to embark upon an exemplary offensive like never before against both sides of the medal; one side that is the reflection of the financial power of organized crime groups and the other side which is a reflection of crime within the justice system to defend the organized crime.
Today, we actually put an end to the sense of legal helplessness to urgently react against all those who would dare to use the hammer of justice while wearing the court dress to commit criminal acts against the law itself, justice system and the society.
Today we will give new power to the High Inspectorate of Justice, allowing the High Inspector of Justice to promptly react to corruptive and criminal rulings made by judges, asking for their dismissal within three days.
Today we give a hand to the new bodies in our judiciary, the High Judicial Council and the High Prosecutorial Council by providing them the immediate suspension mechanism, clearing the way for the start of immediate investigations into the judges and prosecutors in question. This means that all those thinking they will “catch whatever they can” until their turn to undergo vetting comes will not be able to escape justice as their integrity and wealth will be verified. After being removed by vetting process and after the verification of their wealth, they will be indicted and face justice to join their accomplices behind the bars.
There could be no longer room for the cat-and-mouse game in this country, where thieves yell and shout ‘catch the thief”, where criminals keep yelling via the media and the politics “catch the criminals” and where, in all this game, the public opinion does no longer know what to believe and what to choose amid these all rivers of mud being thrown daily.
I know quite well we haven’t merely worried, but we have shaken and crushed organized crime to its bone through the Power of Law Operation. I know very well that the organized crime and the proceeds from organized crime have been invested to cause as much misunderstanding as possible. I know very well that individuals receiving cash rewards from the organized crime appear in TV studios to become advocates of the organized crime, speaking in an imperceptible way just to minimize and downplay actions committed by people who have earned their wealth by killing people, turning into money the innocent blood they have shed on Albania’s roads over the past 30 years; speaking on behalf of individuals who have barbarically exploited girls from poor and ordinary families in this country and have forced them into prostitution, making money by violating their honor and lives; individuals who have poisoned the young people’s blood by trafficking drugs and have been actively involved in the international organized crime networks and who have been sentenced by the international justice or eve the Albanian justice system; individuals who have continuously stained Albania’s image and have also constantly stained Albanian politicians, where, by no means, I have never and will ever accept that we are all alike. Of course there were, there are politicians with links to the organized crime, but it is precisely those who are linked to crime that talk more about how crime is linked elated to politics.
The offensive we have launched is neither a game, nor merely a regular action, but an operation that stabs organized crime in the heart, hitting what the organized crime holds sacred; its wealth.
Sending these people being bars is just like sending professors for post-graduate studies overseas. While in jail, these people continue – not only here, but everywhere – with their activities and move to the boardroom, protected by state walls, taking advantage of permanent links everywhere, from U.S. to Europe, and Albania, also in Albania within the prison system to have normal communication and to run lucrative operations from prison.
So, imprisonment is not enough for them!
They should be stripped of their illegal wealth!
The operation will do just that, strip them of unlawful wealth and make it impossible for them to recycle undeclared assets and wealth, which is definitely greater than the declared one, will make them impossible to drive up and down in cars challenging the state and the community, making it impossible for them to boast and brag about in neighborhoods and bars where girls and boys, students want to spend a peaceful evening and are forced to live under the pressure of the eyes, hands and words of these scumbags.
Individuals like these are to be found all over the world. Scumbags like them can be found right at the heart of New York, Paris, and Berlin, not roaming the ground, but underground.
Many people are under the influence of the propaganda fueled by them and under the influence of propaganda fueled by those who are not here in Parliament, who abandoned Parliament and turned this Parliament into a mess and Albanian politics into an arena where “We are all alike” and doing their best to link SP and our government to crime, make people, not everyone, but some of them say “why are you dealing with them? “Why are you doing it today?” “Why today after seven years.” Indeed, six years and a half and not seven years have passed since we took over, since I count every day since we took office, because every single day is precious to us and the work we do. I want to tell everyone that what we are doing today could not be done yesterday, that when they say the state, they have to understand that the state is the government, the state is the Parliament, the state is the courts, but they are not all united together. They have to understand that the state is also the police, but the State Police are being accused, in the most unfair way, most of the time, not because they have caught them, but because they have never been convicted, or they are sentenced too late, or sentenced, released, or, after being convicted, arrested again, released from the courtroom, and have committed crimes again.
Who would we do that with? And I’m not saying 2013, neither 2015, nor 2017, but last year? To whom would we bring the special law? Who were we supposed to forward the special law to? Who were the State Police supposed to forward the wealth files of these individuals, who have taken hostage people, killed people, ruined girls’ lives and trafficked drugs and, with the help of their accomplices in politics, they took hostage political debate in Albania turning it into a scandalous, into a disgusting, heinous and unreasonable debate about the reason why we have been elected through a constant refrain about alleged crime, criminals, murderers and so on and so forth. And through this debate plunging the politics into the lowest level, which might be the case also in other countries at certain moments, because what we impatiently have waited for materialization of this offensive have been exactly the opportunity to send the verification file of these assets to a right address.
Which was the address to send these files until recently? The General Prosecutor’s Office? Prosecutors who had yet to undergo vetting process and by taking advantage of the changes to the justice system and the fact that they yet have to undergo vetting have confused the system’s decentralization with the total centralization of the criminal competence in their hands?

To whom would the prosecutors send the file on each of these individuals, to whom we have no links of whatsoever, but, on the contrary, we are seeking to send behind bars once and for all?
To which judge? To those who are complicit in the crimes of these individuals?
A very tough law on the assets of crime, the so-called Anti-Mafia law, which is much tougher than the special law we have adopted, is in force for years now. Look at the Anti-Mafia law results over all these years. Ridiculous! Look how through the Anti-Mafia law, not only the majority of these individuals have escaped justice, but they have managed to launder the proceeds of crime, because their wealth and assets have turned out to be clean following controls under the Anti-Mafia law.
Why is it that this is not understood and how comes a part of people fail to figure out this is a battle without political limits! This is a battle it doesn’t matter who wages it; it doesn’t matter at all whether you have voted for the government is waging it on and it doesn’t matter at all who is going to reap the benefits of this battle, but it is important to the family of every ordinary citizen, regardless of who he or she votes for, it is important to the family of every oversea emigrant who are deprived of their properties that are stolen by these individuals.
Just take a look what we are going through in the efforts to determine the sites that would host the new residential neighborhoods as part of the reconstruction program in Durres. Thousands of square meters of state-owned and public properties seemingly free when you look them up on the map and apparently seem to be still state-owned properties and lands, but when entering the property registration’s labyrinth, you find out large parts of these lands are owned by this kind of people.
So, what are we doing?
What we are doing is that we are actually taking a real risk and at a time when the justice system is still fragile and when this operation risks to turn out unsuccessful, we have reasons to believe we will mitigate it, since the Special Prosecution Office (SPAK) has just become operational. Is it a coincidence that the operation coincides with the SPAK establishment? Not at all. It absolutely matches up. SPAK was born exactly for this. SPAK is already there to do exactly this and we have passed a law that gives police two important competences:

First, it allows police to act on a closed list. The list is a closed one because the subjects to this special law are individuals who have been previously convicted on a number of charges, including the most serious charges, yet they will face no charges today, but their wealth and assets will be checked and verified like never before and they will be told to justify the properties and assets registered on their names or their family members, who are also subject to this law. Second, the law provides a second tool with no police or the prosecutors, but these suspects themselves having to provide evidence to demonstrate that their wealth is not generated through criminal activities, so the burden of proof is transferred to them.
Quite simple. Are you someone who have committed murder, trafficking in human beings, arms, and drugs? Have you served or are you serving the sentence? We live in democracy. Everyone has the right to rehabilitate. A serious crime you have committed in the past should not continue to haunt you also after serving the sentence, but you should prove how did you amassed your wealth? Is this wealth legal, or illegal one? You are free and you are acting in the circumstances of freedom and free market. However, you will enjoy what you are entitled to enjoy.
To elaborate it further, I would say that a huge outcry is being caused by those who oppose it and this time not by politicians, according to whom we are the KÇK group, so we are the ones fighting this group while we are the subject to this fight ourselves. This is a contradiction, as the lawyer would say. And I am not talking about those villains who appear on TV studios, many of them rewarded to do exactly what they are doing, but I am talking about ordinary people, who ask: ‘Why you starting the operation against these people? Why don’t you start it against yourselves first? Why don’t you start it with Surrel?
Because it is not us the ones who should do this. May I check my wealth?! I personally and every elected person declare the wealth since we entered politics. There is a law forcing us to declare our wealth. A certain number of public officials are subject to the declaration of wealth and they do it every year and our declarations of wealth are part of a file in the High Inspectorate of the Declaration of Assets. This inspectorate is in place to check our assets. The Inspectorate is an independent institution. Whether this Inspectorate does its job right is a matter we can discuss, but it is not the police to verify the politicians’ or judges’ wealth. It is not the government – God forbid it – the one that should check the wealth of the politicians or judges, because this is not the year 1945, but 2020. These are exclusive issues of the independent institutions and the new independent justice system we are building. Many people wrongly believe that the story of suspicious relations of the judges and prosecutors, who were removed from the system by the vetting process, ends right there. Many people think, why, was this all? Because they have thought that vetting process sends people to jail. No, vetting is not a court that sends you to prison. Vetting is a process to decide whether your hands are clean enough to take the hammer of justice or not. If your hands are dirty, then you are removed from the system. The new system should comprise people whose hands are clean and who will ask those with their hands dirty to prove that the wealth they were unable to justify in front of the vetting commission has been generated by work. If they fail to do so, they will no longer sleep in their own homes, but they will join their friends they have cooperated with to generate that illicit wealth.
Of course I do understand the impatience of many Albanians to see certain people end in prison – and I am not mentioning names, because everyone knows them, including our colleagues, and I mean not only our colleagues of one party alone, but our colleagues in opposition or in the previous government.
And how can this be done except by giving Albania an instrument that we do not control, that is not an expression of the government’s willingness to fight the adversary in the name of justice today or in the future? That would be the end. Imagine if I was to be tasked with dealing with you, imagine if I were a police officer, a judge, or a prosecutor. Those who walked out of here would not be home today, but thank God we no longer live in that kind of system and therefore everyone’s duties and powers are separate, and however great these powers are individually they must be channelled where the democratic system channels them. This is what people should understand.
I would have wished for the justice reform to complete in the blink of an eye, just like it is the case when posting a Facebook comment, with people asking: ‘Why didn’t send this and that to jail? You are all the same.” It’s impossible to work that way. The reform of justice in Albania is far from over, believe it or not, but suffice it to compare with countries that have already joined the European Union, it is implemented much faster than in other countries. As we speak today, there are European Union members that have yet to complete the justice reform, and these are countries that have joined the EU and had yet to implement the justice reform.
Of course it takes time, because it is not simply about building houses in the aftermath of the earthquake. It is a mechanical process and it takes time, but we will do utmost to complete it as soon as possible. That is to say, we will do our best to make sure that all those who have lost their individual homes will move into their new houses on the New Year eve, by the end of this year. We will do utmost efforts. Just like it is the case of the reconstruction program, we would very much like to make sure that the courts and the prosecution offices are all created and the whole new justice system is in place within this year. This is theoretically impossible, as it is beyond the human capacities of any government, whatever a majority it may be in the parliament. It is impossible since it is about building the state’s main pillars and it is about building it not on a new soil, but once the old column collapses and the ruins of that column are removed and the ruins are all these members of the KÇK group. These are ruins that keep inflicting “casualties” and there is no other rescue operation but this one. Whoever thinks that the day has come to grab a sack full of cash since they will fail to pass the vetting process, but instead catch whatever they can by releasing life-sentenced prisoners and then get away with that. Yes, he or her can do that, but they will be suspended within three days and the much tougher vetting process will be launched in three days; verification of the integrity and their wealth by all institutions. All independent institutions will then act to provide whole information on this sort of judges and once the verification completes they won’t be able to go home, but instead they will end up in the hands of the prosecutors of the Special Prosecution Office, SPAK. Then they will end to the Special Court and then they will join their accomplices in jail.
Should this operation turn out to be a success, you and everyone watching us now must clearly understand, Albania will be completely different. If this operation turns to be a success, there will be a great divorce between the world of lawlessness and the world of law, which are intertwined in every public space today. I cannot crucify local mayors when their offices door is forcibly thrown open by individuals who have committed seven murders and tell them: “I want to run the water supply enterprise.” The world’s history features many similar examples. History of the neighbouring Italy features similar examples. If the today’s Italy is in a different position and a completely different country now and experiencing another era in terms of the relations with the Mafia, this was exactly thanks to the same thing we are doing today, confiscating their wealth and sending them before justice, this time under charges for laundering the proceeds of crime.
These are all processes that take time. I earlier said thanks God we are not in the year 1945, because humans are made to adapt and fit to systems. Systems are what keep humans restrained. The man cannot alter the system. I have come across all these the post-dictatorship dissidents, or the so-called dissidents who keep talking about Enver Hoxha, the communists, and the crimes committed by the communist regime, because they have yet to overcome the fear of being former regime collaborators at various levels.