Italy Arrests Albania’s Fugitive Former General Prosecutor Llalla

Italian authorities arrested Albania's fugitive former General Prosecutor, Adriatik Lllalla, in Rome, on 10 December, Albania's Special Prosecution Against Organised Crime and Corruption, SPAK, confirmed to BIRN on Monday.

Llalla has been sentenced to two years in prison for not declaring his real wealth in asset declarations, estimated at around a million euros. He was one of the most senior ex-officials to be found guilty of such offences in Albania.

After the verdict of the Special Court of Appeals Against Corruption and Organised Crime in September, he vanished and his whereabouts were unknown. On October 8, an international warrant was issued for his arrest.

Llalla served as General Prosecutor from 2012 to 2017, when his five-year mandate expired. In February 2017, as Albania was working on its flagship Justice Reform, the then US Ambassador to Tirana, Donald Lu, branded him an "enemy of the reform".

Llalla retorted by claiming the ambassador was exerting "typical Sorosian pressure" on him, referring to the US billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros who is often a target of conspiracy theories.

The US State Department declared him "persona non grata" in 2018, the first known Albanian official to be banned from entering the US for suspected involvement in "significant corruption".

Prosecutors started investigating him in March 2018 and issued a seizure order for an apartment in the port city of Durres and 22,000 square metres of land near Tirana.