After its meeting on Monday, the High Prosecutorial Council (KLP) has opened a call for current prosecutors to apply for one of 15 positions as special prosecutor in the new Anti-Corruption Prosecution Office (SPAK).
According to the call for applications, qualifying candidates should have no less than 10 years of experience, should have successfully passed the vetting, and should not be members of the KLP. Moreover, special prosecutors and their close family will be subjected, during the 9-year term, to a strict regime of communication and financial monitoring, giving up a large part of their personal privacy.
In an interview with Ora News, KLP chairman Gent Ibrahimi stated that the flipside of sacrificing this privacy may be a successful career with a stable position for 9 years outside the everyday influence of politics, and that this would also be a guarantee for society that the special prosecutors would not be corrupted while in office.
At the same time, he tempered the short-term expectations regarding the SPAK, which is expected to take over nearly all cases from the current Serious Crimes Prosecution, including investigations into several high-ranking (former) politicians, including Durrës mayor Vangjush Dako and former Minister of Interior Saimir Tahiri.
First the candidates will have to pass the full filter of the vetting (although the announcement does not specify whether this includes a final verdict from the Independent Qualification Commission or Special Appeals Chamber), and afterwards the National Investigation Bureau (BKH) will need to be installed and trained. In other words, the firs concrete results in any of these pending cases cannot be expected in the near future.
However, if indeed the SPAK in reality turns out to be sufficiently isolated from political and criminal influence, if may turn out to represent the greatest positive achievement of the justice reform, no matter the many constitutional problems of its process.
