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| Thoma Gëllçi |
In Albania, the Court of First Instance against Corruption and Organized Crime decided today to sentence the former director of the State Radio and Television (known locally by the acronyms 'RTSH'), Thoma Gëllçi, to two years in prison, on charges of "abuse of office". Due to the shortened trial, he will have to serve 1 year and 4 months in prison. The court also ruled that he should be deprived of the right to hold public office for a term of five years.
The former General Director of RTSH, was arrested in October last year at the request of the Special Prosecution, SPAK, according to which, were found "legal violations in the procurement procedure" organized in November 2018 for the purchase of some equipment for the “RTSH Agro” channel. For the same tender, with a value of about 87 million ALL, three employees of this institution were arrested, members of the Bid Evaluation Commission, Julian Tapia, Alban Malaveci, and Ervin Muraj, on suspicion of "violation of equality in tenders". The latter was sentenced today by the court to 1 year in prison.
The whole accusation against Mr. Gëllçi is related to an addition to the contract with the winning firm, for the postponement of the payment deadline by TVSH, since the Ministry of Finance had not yet delivered the fund, as well as the postponement of delivery which the firm had ready for delivery within the initial deadline. Action, which does not turn out to have caused financial damage to the institution. On the contrary, according to Mr. Dorjan Matlia, defense lawyer of Mr. Gëllçi “from our calculations, if he had not acted in this way, due to the untimely payment of the contract value, RTSH would have been obliged to pay over 6 million leks in the form of interest on arrears”.
Lawyer Matlija told VOA that he felt "shocked by the court decision." It was a clearly unfair decision. It seems that the Court either did not understand the case or did not want to understand it, as the decision is not based on the facts of the file ". According to him, there was a “tendency of the Court towards Mr. Gëllçi, even if you look at the sentence. In analogous cases, the Court has handed down significantly lower sentences. Apparently, there is a tendency to make Mr. Gëllçi an "example" to first satisfy someone's interest, and secondly to make it seem as if SPAK has functioned and consider this as a success".