The placement of former Albanian President and Prime Minister, Sali Berisha, was confirmed to AFP by Berisha’s party legal advisor, Ivi Kaso. The special court against corruption and organized crime indicted Sali Berisha, 79, in October, suspecting him of “passive corruption of a senior official”.
The investigation is linked to the alleged favoritism from which his son-in-law allegedly benefited during the privatization of a sports complex which belonged to the State, while Sali Berisha was the head of government, in 2008. He now leads the Democratic Party , an opposition party.
A ban on communicating with anyone
His lawyer, Me Genc Gjokutaj, specified that the court had prohibited the former head of government from communicating with anyone, apart from “family members who live with him”. He said he intended to appeal the court’s decision. On Thursday, Parliament lifted Sali Berisha’s immunity, paving the way for a possible arrest in the investigation.
Sali Berisha’s son-in-law, Jamarber Malltezi, was arrested in October and placed under house arrest for alleged corruption and money laundering. He is suspected of having taken advantage of his father-in-law’s position to acquire a sports complex in Tirana which belonged to the Ministry of Defense and was converted into apartments.
Sali Berisha rejected these accusations, calling them “purely political”, and accused the head of the current government, Edi Rama, of being at the origin of these prosecutions. Sali Berisha was first Albanian’s first democratically elected president after the fall of communism in the 1990s. He then led the government from 2005 to 2013. Last year he was banned from entering the United States and in Britain due to his alleged involvement in organized crime and corruption, charges he has denied.