14.3.2008 by Lupo.

Albania Ignores Trade in Fake Degrees

By Besar Likmeta and Flamur Vezaj in Tirana and Drita Abdiu in Tetovo

20 February 2008 From officials to convicted criminals, for few hundred euros anyone can buy a fake degree on Tirana`s flourishing black market while authorities keep ignoring the problem.

“We are not sure what a bachelor’s degree is,” is how Eduard recalls the words of an official at the Albanian Ministry of Education, when he tried to have his diploma certified after returning from the United States where he had studied criminal justice.

“It took me roughly eight months to prove my degree was valid and in the meantime I was barred from applying for any job in a state institution,” the University of South Florida graduate remembers.

“They had no idea what credit hours were, or whether a bachelor’s degree from a state university in the US was awarded after a four-year course or after just two years.”

Anyone who wants to apply for a job with a public institution in Albania needs to have their diploma certified by the ministry as authentic and equivalent to degrees awarded by local universities. The process is not meant to take more than three months.

However, a Balkan Insight investigation has found that not only does the process often take up to a year but that the ministry has certified fake diplomas as authentic.

Even worse, the ministry has turned a blind eye to this error and never made public its findings once the fake degrees were reported.

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Balkan Insight has discovered that fake degrees, many of them allegedly coming from Tetovo University in Macedonia, can be bought for a few hundreds euros in the streets of Tirana.

Although the Ministry of Education says it passed on its findings to the Ministry of the Interior and to the former prosecutor-general, Theodhori Sollaku, no investigations was launched.

This is in spite of the fact that the presentation of false documents is a severe offence in Albania, meriting a sentence of up to three years’ imprisonment.

While fake diplomas pass through the system and while the people using them have not been called to account, legitimate graduates such as Eduard have had to compete with people whose diplomas cost them a few hours’ work and a fistful of euros.

Institutional Silence

On March 3, 2007, an ad-hoc commission gathered on the third floor of the Ministry of Education in Tirana, headed by the Deputy Minister of Education, Ardiana Gjonaj.

The commission met to review the earlier decisions made by a similar commission in November 2005, which had certified a number of diplomas issued to Albanian nationals, allegedly by the law department of Tetovo University.

The minutes of the recent meeting, obtained by Balkan Insight, concerned 13 people whose law degrees from the university were certified by the ministry in 2005 after having obtained certification by presenting fake documents.

Among the 13 was an Albanian deputy in parliament, a member of the ruling, centre-right, coalition of Prime Minister, Sali Berisha. The deputy still lists the degree from Tetovo University in his CV.

Tetovo University was not at fault over the deputy’s fake diploma. Indeed, on October 19, 2005, the university informed the Albanian Education Ministry that although the deputy had enrolled in the law department, he had not passed any exams. In spite of this information, the ministry certified his non-existent “diploma” on December 26, 2005.

After annulling the previous decisions at the review session in 2007, the commission notified the Ministry of Interior and the office of the Prosecutor-General and promised to make the findings public both on the ministry’s website and in the press.

But few of the pledges made at the March meeting were upheld. After inspecting the Education Ministry website and newspapers from the time, Balkan Insight has not found any evidence that the information on the false degrees was made public.

Balkan Insight contacted Gjonaj to ask whether the decision was ever made public, but the deputy minister declined to comment.

The ministry did carry out the decision to notify the Ministry of Interior and the office of the Prosecutor-General of the misdemeanors but in spite of that, these senior state officials did not launch any known investigation.

Aleksander Goga, head of investigations at the time in the office of the Prosecutor-General, told Balkan Insight that he never received any documents concerning fake diplomas from the University of Tetovo.

The head of the Economic Crime Unit at the Prosecutor-General’s office, Llambi Baku, also denied receiving any material relating to this issue from former prosecutor-general Sollaku, who has since been dismissed.

President Bamir Topi sacked Sollaku after the government accused him of failing to act on a number of corruption cases.

False degrees – a nice little earner

In the meantime, an illicit traffic business in falsified university degrees documents continues unabated on the streets of Tirana.

“Here in Kavaja street, you can find anything you need, apart from a fake mother or father,” jokes Roni, 35, a heavily-built man who trades in educational documents.

Kavaja street, which leads off Tirana’s central Skanderbeg square, has become synonymous with fake papers. It is the favoured location for gangs who in a few hours for the right price can get hold of any false document, from university diplomas up to British passports.

Roni explains that the cost of a university diploma ranges from €500 to €800. “I can get any seal you want,” Roni adds, exuding confidence, when asked if he can supply a fake diploma from Tetovo.

As an Albanian-language university, but lying outside the country - and thus outside the remit of the country’s official institutions - the University of Tetovo, established in the mid-1990s, is a popular choice for Albanians who wish to falsely claim they have obtained a degree abroad.

The university rector, Sadi Bexheti, admits the scale of the problem is alarming. “These diplomas are not issued by the University but are printed by criminal gangs with the help of insiders,” he complains. “Often, students from Albania who have not even made it to their second year, have falsified their diplomas and have tried to have them certified,” Bexheti adds.

The rector goes on to say that he believes fake Tetovo degrees are also being sold in Kosovo and Montenegro.
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Balkaninsight

Albania PM Condemns Attack on BIRN Editor

13 March 2008 Tirana _ Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha condemned an assault on BIRN Albania Editor Besar Likmeta, in a statement issued Thursday.

“The Prime Minister has learned with worry the news of an act of violence toward the journalist, Besar Likmeta by deputy Tom Doshi, in the presence of deputy Arben Isaraj,” read the statement.

“Condemning this act of violence and all similar acts towards journalists, the Prime Minister asks all the competent authorities to begin a thorough investigation into this unacceptable act,” the statement added.

Tom Doshi, a deputy from Albania’s ruling centre-right coalition, lashed out violently in a hotel bar in Tirana when confronted by this reporter over his fake law degree from Tetovo University in Macedonia.

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Balkaninsight

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14.3.2008 by CrniLabudovi.

Ethnic Albanian party says it is quitting Macedonia’s coalition government

The Associated Press

Thursday, March 13, 2008

SKOPJE, Macedonia: An ethnic Albanian party pulled out of Macedonia’s governing coalition late Thursday, officials said, and the government could fall unless the prime minister can find another coalition partner.

The Democratic Party of Albanians, or DPA, quit over demands that include the immediate recognition of neighboring Kosovo, social welfare for former rebels and making Albanian a second official language.

Party leader Menduh Thaci said the DPA’s central committee, which was meeting Thursday night, supported his decision to walk out.

“The decision to leave the government is final and irrevocable,” he said after the meeting in the Skopje’s suburb of Saraj, which is overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian.

The move triggers political turmoil three weeks before a decision on whether Macedonia will be invited to join NATO. Macedonia is already embroiled in a name dispute with neighbor Greece.

Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski will have to form a new coalition to avoid early elections, because he is now left with 57 of parliament’s 120 seats.

The government did not make any comment after Thaci’s statement. Gruevski was in Brussels on Thursday and was due back Friday morning.

Under Macedonian law, there is no time limit for him to seek a new coalition partner, and there are several parties that are likely to agree to join his government.

Still, the DPA’s pullout has caused a political crisis at a sensitive time. Macedonia, along with Croatia and Albania, hopes to be invited to join NATO at the alliance’s summit, which starts April 2 in Bucharest, Romania.

But Greece has threatened to veto Skopje’s entry unless a disagreement over the former Yugoslav republic’s name is resolved.

Greece says the name “Macedonia” implies territorial claims on the Greek northern region with the same name. Talks on the issue have produced no results for years.

U.N. mediator Matthew Nimetz has proposed five alternative names that Macedonia could consider adopting: Constitutional Republic of Macedonia, Democratic Republic of Macedonia, Independent Republic of Macedonia, New Republic of Macedonia, and Republic of Upper Macedonia.

On Thursday, Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis met in Brussels with Gruevski, but the two made no progress in the dispute.

“I reiterated Greece’s position and he reiterated his position,” she said.

Bakoyannis said U.N.-mediated talks on the issue, led by Nimetz, would resume in Vienna next week.

The name dispute has clouded relations between the two neighbors for 17 years.

Before Thaci announced his party’s decision, the European Commission’s representative in Macedonia, Erwan Fuere, had called on the DPA to “demonstrate a sense of leadership.”

“It is vital that the government should remain united, the coalition should work collectively together and, as I say, this is the best moment to demonstrate the sense of leadership and the determination” to implement reforms seen as essential to Macedonia’s hopes of eventually joining the European Union, he said.

President Branko Crvenkovski said he would call on Gruevski to meet with political leaders by Monday at the latest to seek a way out of the crisis.

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