A joint commitment agreement between the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Finance and Economy, and the accounting firm Ernst & Young was signed in the Hall of Maps at the Prime Minister’s Office.

Prime Minister Edi Rama’s remarks at the signing ceremony:

 

Greetings to everyone!

I would like to wish the Ernst & Young team welcome to Albania. I would like to emphasize from the outset that beyond the world-wide renowned name, this team’s value coming to Albania to work with our agencies in combating economic crime and tax evasion lies in the fact that, first and foremost, this is a joint German-American, or American-German team, you name it, led namely by Mr. Bladel (Louis) and Mr. Heissner (Stefan), the first boasting an internationally-renowned experience as one of the FBI executives and the latter also as a person with a precious experience, who has held various leading positions in the Germany’s anti-fraud and economic crime-fighting agencies.

On the other hand, it is worth mentioning that this deal is not a consultancy agreement, but an accord on joint actions on the ground. A large German-American expert team will be deployed here in Albania to work closely with the Ministry of Finance’s investigation units, tax investigation, customs investigation and the anti-economic crime department at the State Police to enable, on one hand, the launch of a joint working process using a contemporary and sophisticated methodology and, on the other hand, enhance these agencies’ capacities to combat a phenomenon as we strengthen efforts to fight tax evasion and economic crime following a series of significant accomplishments in this field.

Let me remind you that the Ministry of Interior and the State Police have achieved very significant results in their efforts to identify and freeze wealth and criminal proceeds. Albanian authorities have quintupled the amount of wealth seized from criminal activities over the past four years and this figure is sufficient evidence to understand how much progress has been made, but also aware of the fact that a lot remains to be done in this process.

The Power of Law crackdown is a meaningful example of the fact that beyond the daily work, the indispensable routine of the State Police, priority addressing of a highly problematic phenomenon to society, as the ongoing crackdown on organized crime networks is, requires interaction and coordination between many structures, because just a structure that is engaged in everyday routine is not enough.

Of course, in terms of its size and scope of action, this newly-established structure is very small, but it is the same model in terms of its goal, a model based on the best international experience, the internal human resources of the agencies currently operating in this field, and the necessity for our agencies to constantly interact and co-ordinate actions with one another.

This is a serious inherited problem in all sectors and when it comes to the fight against crime, the fight against corruption, the money laundry and tax evasion such a problem of the uncoordinated work becomes more evident and I am talking about not only the government agencies, but also other independent agencies, namely the Prosecutor’s Office.

I am pretty confident that our partners’ experience will be a great added value and the goal is certainly not to take advantage of their readiness and experience to provide useful advice but to work together on specific cases, creating various models of investigation into economic crime and tax evasion and create the conditions to set up a much more qualified and more effective interaction structure between our agencies.

I am fully confident that under this agreement we will further strengthen our position in the fight against crime in general and the fight against economic crime and tax evasion in particular. This is a field we have done a lot but we feel the need to do much more because there is still money out there that belongs to the people and the country and is now where it should not be. There is still money out there that is in the hands of crime, or in the hands of those who are not satisfied with legitimate profits, but are used to hide their income that belong to the state and the society.

Once again, being deeply convinced that we will soon produce concrete results to share with the public, I would like to thank the representatives of the leading Ernst & Young firm for their presence. I am very pleased that, like rarely around the world, Albania has brought together Americans and Germans, which is a good sign and will certainly be a useful model for others to consider.

Thank you very much!