Kosovo Probing 200 People for Corruption

The prosecutor’s national coordinator for corruption cases, Laura Pula, on Friday said that from November of 2013 to February this year, prosecutors across the country had raised 83 indictments for corruption against 196 people.

“Amongst the indicted eight people are officials in government, nine people working in governmental agencies and eight people working for the Kosovo Police,” she told a press conference.

The others work in public health institutions, local government, public and private companies and in judicial institutions.

“If we add to this number the people accused by the Special Prosecution, which has indicted one judge, six lawyers, two legal counselors and four doctors, we reach a total of 196 accused people,” she explained.

She did not otherwise comment on the identities of the accused.

Local prosecutions in Kosovo do not deal with high-level corruption cases, for which the EU rule-of-law mission, EULEX, remains responsible.

EULEX and the State Prosecutor signed an agreement last year defining high-level corruption cases in terms of the level of office that the suspects hold.

The fight against organised crime and corruption is one of the key criteria for Kosovo’s further European integration.

In its latest annual Corruption Perception Index, the watchdog organisation Transparency International ranked Kosovo 111th out of 176 countries worldwide in terms of corruption.