Former Socialist mayor Vangjush Dako to remain in prison for abuse of office

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The Special Court against Corruption and Organized Crime upheld the imprisonment of the former mayor of Durrës, Vangjush Dako for abuse of office in two cases.

Meanwhile, judge Erion Bani has changed the measure for two other defendants, Adrian Bulku, from detention to house arrest, and Diana Dedja, from arrest to obligation to appear.

For the other four defendants, namely Fiqiri Farruku, Adnand Toçila, Ferzilet Hajderi, and Meri Semini, the measures taken in absentia were upheld, with the first three being held in detention and the last two under house arrest.

Adhurim Qehajaj, Ermal Lama, and Fatmir Ejupi, who are subject to pre-trial detention in absentia, are still being sought.

After the conclusion of the marathon session that lasted over six hours, Vangjush Dako’s lawyer, Petrit Ismaili, stated that the stance of the Special Prosecution Office is unsubstantiated.

“The decision in our opinion is disproportionate to the time of execution. Dako is being investigated for a historical criminal fact. The criminal offense is over 10-12 years old. The prosecutor did not show any evidence to justify the conditions and criteria of the security measure,” Ismaili told media.

Through his lawyer, Dako requested a milder security measure, such as house arrest, obligation to appear, or asset guarantee, which were not taken into consideration by the Court. He announced that this decision would be immediately appealed to the Special Appeals Court.

Vangjush Dako and his former colleagues in the municipality are accused of abuse of office and falsification of documents in two cases.

The first case involves a building that started with a seven-floors plan in 2010 and was completed with 11 floors in 2014, and was also damaged by the earthquake in 2019.

The builder, Fiqiri Farruku, was one of the arrested on the matter.

Others to stand accused in the case are the Director of the Directorate of Control and Planning of the Territory Adhurim Qehajaj, architect Ermal Lama, designer Meri Semini, as well as surveyors Fatmir Ejupi and Adrian Bulku.

The second case concerns a tender dated March 25th, 2014 for consulting services, the provision of a project called “Implementation design for the Coastal Promenade and the public beach from Bërryli to Currila”.

Vangjush Dako and the working group consisting of Adhurim Qehajaj, Diana Dedja, Adnan Toçila are accused in this case, where the members were tasked to determine the terms of reference and the limit fund.

Initially, the limit fund of said tender was 21 million Albanian lek, but because the surface of the project was changed from 2.04 hectares to 20.4 hectares, the value reached 210 million Albanian lek.

Although the High State Control requested in 2015 that measures be taken to recover the damage, the company paid off 40% of the remaining value, causing a damage of 18 million Albanian lek to the state.

This “mistake” with a decimal point was the reason for the 10-fold increase in the value of the tender for the beach promenade in Durrës.

The tender dated March 25th, 2014 was also denounced by Ferdinand Xhaferraj, chairman of the Democratic Party in Durrës.

In 2019, Vangjush Dako was designated non-grata by the United States, for “his involvement in major cases of corruption”.

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