By Blendi Kajsiu
The judge Pëllumbi’s decision to keep the mayor in custody was not based on the wiretaps. The two main arguments in the decision were Veliaj’s position as mayor and the risk of flight.
The fact that SPAK is the most successful institution in the history of the Albanian state in fighting high-level political corruption makes criticism and monitoring of its standards even more necessary.
These standards have not always been democratic or well-justified. A clear example was the recent case where a SPAK prosecutor wiretapped a member of the Constitutional Court who was not under investigation, without any approval from a judge, and regarding a case in which SPAK was a party.
This is a case that reeks of unconstitutionality, conflict of interest, and violation of the fundamental rights of a citizen—especially one who is a member of the Constitutional Court. Even the legal basis for such an action (likely Article 22, point 8 of the Criminal Procedure Code) does not eliminate the strong anti-democratic stench of this act.
Criticism of SPAK in this case was entirely appropriate and constructive because it highlighted a fundamental problem in the legislation regulating the work of this institution. It was a first step in pushing for improvements to this legislation—either through parliamentary intervention or by taking the relevant articles of the Criminal Procedure Code to the Constitutional Court. These articles currently allow SPAK prosecutors to wiretap court proceedings without a judge’s permission, particularly in cases where SPAK is a party to the proceedings.
Unfortunately, this serious case of wiretapping the Constitutional Court by SPAK did not produce any constructive debate in our media or public space about how the legislation governing SPAK’s activities could or should be improved to prevent democratic and constitutional violations.
Many of our media outlets, both left and right, used the wiretapping incident simply as further evidence that SPAK is an anti-democratic institution focused on violating human rights. This interpretation’s main goal was not to improve SPAK but to delegitimize it.
The same thing happened with the now-famous wiretaps of Mayor Veliaj in his prison cell. A media frenzy erupted—fueled in part by pro-SPAK media—which claimed that the evidence from these wiretaps was the primary reason SPAK justified keeping Veliaj in custody.
All of this turned out to be a soap bubble since the wiretaps hardly revealed any legal or ethical violations by Mayor Veliaj. His requests to family members to contact newspapers or local journalists to share his side of the story were neither illegal nor immoral, and they did not constitute a threat to SPAK investigators. There was nothing scandalous in these recordings.
This is exactly where the anti-SPAK propaganda began. The bursting of this bubble was interpreted by many media outlets as evidence of SPAK’s weak case for keeping Mayor Veliaj in custody. The impression created was that Veliaj was being held because he asked his family members to contact journalists.
In fact, Judge Pëllumbi’s decision to keep the mayor in custody was not based on these recordings. The two main arguments for his detention were Veliaj’s position as mayor and the risk of flight. While the mayor’s defense may disagree with these arguments, they are reasonable and not speculative.
The flight of high-ranking Socialist officials under SPAK investigation is not a fantasy. It’s a phenomenon we are reminded of daily by Arben Ahmetaj and his interviews, which aim to tarnish Rama’s reputation but not to expose the Socialist government’s corrupt schemes, which Ahmetaj knows well. Therefore, this is not a speculative argument.
Likewise, Veliaj’s position as mayor makes it very difficult for SPAK to conduct an investigation while he is free. A mayor holds enough power to obstruct an investigation that involves his subordinates or businessmen benefiting from the municipal budget. Under these conditions, the judge’s decision is far from scandalous, even if many would argue it’s unfair.
What is scandalous is the fact that high-level officials and politicians in Albania do not resign from their positions when under investigation for serious offenses such as corruption or money laundering. Resignation does not imply guilt—it signals transparency and ensures an investigative process free from political and administrative pressure.
A declaration of innocence under such conditions is much more credible than one obtained while the politician remains a high official, MP, or opposition leader. This should be the basic political and democratic standard that our media work to create.
Unfortunately, rather than standing for democratic standards, our media tend to align with political camps. For this reason, even when media criticism of SPAK starts from a constructive base, it quickly turns into propaganda that seems more concerned with reproducing the swampy political status quo in which the media itself operates.
