The year 2013, a year of high corruption and low efficiency of fighting it

Prishtina, April 5, 2014 – Today, FOL Movement held a press conference presenting the annual police, Prosecution and Courts statistics within the Anti-Corruption Statistics Platform (platforms: http://www.levizjafol.org / statistics-platform anti-corruption /? message = true & FaqeID = 1) and also the decisions and actions of Assembly and Government of Kosovo and European Rule of Law mission – EULEX in the field of fighting corruption in Kosovo in 2013.
Fidan Kalaja from FOL Movement said that during 2013, Kosovo Police has handled 57 cases on corruption offenses and taking bribe. Criminal charges have been filed against 22 people and 12 people have been arrested. During this year they have handled 43 cases on corruption offenses and giving bribe, criminal charges have been filed against 16 people and 10 people have been arrested. Regarding the cases on corruption offenses, abuse of authority, Kosovo Police has handled 441 cases of corruption, filing criminal charges against 242 people and arresting 45 people.

He further stressed that the Kosovo Prosecutor in 2013, regarding the corruption offense, taking bribes dealt with cases where were implicated 56 people , among all these cases the prosecution solved an amount of cases involving 30 people and at the end of the period remained unsolved cases where were involved 26 people . On the corruption offense giving bribe the dealt with cases where were implicated 59 persons , solving cases with 36 people involved whereas cases with 23 people were involved remained unsolved at the end of 2013. And on the corruption offense , abuse of authority, Kosovo Prosecution dealt with cases where were implicated 1,585 people during 2013, among all these cases the prosecution solved an amount of cases involving 363 people and at the end of the period remained unsolved cases where were involved 1,222 people .

According to him, during 2013, Kosovo Courts on the corruption offence taking bribe dealt with cases implicating 122 people, solving cases with implicating only 31 people whereas cases with implicating 91 people remained unsolved at the end of this period. On the corruption offense giving bribery Kosovo Courts dealt with an amount of cases involving 67 people, solving cases where were involved only 23 people whereas cases involving 44 people remained unsolved at the end of 2013. And for the corruption offense abuse of authority, Kosovo courts dealt with an amount of cases where were implicated 603 people during 2013, solving cases with 66 people implicated while cases with 537 people implicated remained unsolved at the end of this period .
Fidan Kalaja further mentioned that besides the three institutions involved in this platform, FOL Movement has been monitoring anti-corruption activities of three other institutions as well, such as the Government, Parliament and EULEX, regarding their activities in the fight against corruption.

According to the findings of FOL Movement, Kosovo Government in 2013 has approved a total of 427 decisions, among them only 4 decisions were in the fight against corruption, compared with 2012 where 5 of them were in the fight against corruption.
Meanwhile, Kosovo Assembly from 23 plenary sessions held in 2013, only in 6 of them was discussed about the fight against corruption, compared with 2012 where only in 3 sessions was discussed the fight against corruption.

According to anti-corruption statistics for 2013 from EULEX, EULEX courts held only nine trials on corruption cases while EULEX prosecution during 2013 has dealt with nine new cases, has conducted 29 preliminary investigations, there were 15 ongoing investigations, has filed five charges, has amended 2 charges, and confirmed 2 charges.