Albania’s Ex-President Ilir Meta Arrested On Corruption Charges
By Edmond Hoxhaj
Ilir Meta, Albania’s president from 2017 to 2022 and now leader of the opposition Freedom Party, was arrested on Monday by order of prosecutors from the Special Anti-Corruption Structure, SPAK.
Video footage posted on Instagram by Euronews Albania showed Meta putting up a struggle as he was taken from his vehicle by police officers. Tedi Blushi, Meta’s adviser, called the arrest “a terrorist act”.
BIRN has learned that Meta is accused of corruption, money laundering and non-declaration and concealment of wealth. SPAK confirmed the arrest but said more details will be released later.
Investigations into Meta started last year. He was questioned in June by SPAK.
Opposition Democratic Party leader Sali Berisha condemned the arrest, saying: “Everything [being done] against him is political.”
Meta was voted in as president of Albania in 2017 with the support of Edi Rama’s ruling Socialist Party. The party that Meta led at the time, the Socialist Movement for Integration, SMI, had gone into coalition with the Socialists after elections in 2013. Meta took over the party leadership in 2022 after his mandate as president finished.
By then relations between the SMI and the Socialists had deteriorated and later the SMI joined the Democratic Party in opposition – with Meta remaining as head of state.
The Socialists tried to dismiss Meta from the presidency twice while he was in office, once in 2019 for refusing to formally call local elections because there was an opposition boycott, and in 2021 for interfering in the general elections.
A career politician who first entered parliament aged just 23, Meta has been one of the most active and controversial politicians of the last two decades.
In 1999, aged 30, he became prime minister for the first time. He was re-elected PM in 2001 but stepped down in early 2002 after a falling-out with then Socialist Party leader Fatos Nano.
In 2004, Meta’s wing of the party broke away from the Socialist Party to form the Socialist Movement for Integration. Though the SMI consistently trailed behind Albania’s two big parties, the Socialists and the Democrats, it repeatedly secured a slice of power by being in coalition with one or the other.
Praised by some as a wily political operator, Meta and his party have faced accusations of nepotism and corruption, which he denies.
Meanwhile, in an unconnected development on Sunday, SPAK ordered the arrest of Socialist MP Jurgis Cyrbja for active corruption connected to the 2021 elections, supporting crime and revealing state secrets.
Cyrbja had been an MP since 2017. He resigned on October 18, a few days after he was interrogated by SPAK. SPAK said the interception of Cyrbja’s communications on encrypted app Sky ECC had led to the discovery of “at least seven cases” in which he revealed state secrets.
It added that Cyrbja had transmitted information to “internationally wanted persons” and leaked information in order to hinder police operations.
