Press statement by the Minister of Justice Etilda Gjonaj following cabinet meeting:

The Council of Ministers today adopted a package of legal changes denying access to the public benefits to any physical person or legal entities with criminal records and convicted on a series of grave offences linked to organized crime, illicit trafficking, terrorism and corruption.

Under this package, with the entry into force of these measures, this category of individuals, commercial entities or shareholders and their representatives will be denied any opportunity to benefit from the Albanian taxpayers’ money, or financial support from the public funding in exercising their profitable activities.

Our frontal war against the organized crime marks another new development today.

If to date only previously convicted juridical subjects were excluded access to public funding, with the entry of the new package into force, shareholders, administrators and other individuals with decision-making role in these commercial entities, who are or have been previously convicted individuals, will also be denied access to public funds and benefits.

These changes are fully in line with EU directives and international anticorruption and anticrime standards.

The new legal packages stipulate that no company will be awarded a public tender or concession when it turns out to be a convicted juridical subject, or its administrators, managers, representatives, partners or shareholders are persons with criminal records.

The same ban will be applied to benefiting the status of a strategic investor, the benefit of facilitation in the field of tourism and the obtaining of public funding.

I would like to use this opportunity to remind each individual with criminal records that they will have no chance to profit a single penny from the Albanian taxpayers’ money.