Organized Crime and Coruption Project

Cables leaked from the U.S. Embassy in Albania written in 2009 reveal that concern about corruption at all levels of Albanian government led officials to withdraw substantial portions of aid money.

A cable penned by US Ambassador in Tirana John Withers warned a U.S. aid agency, the Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC), that Albania did not have the transparency nor the technical capacity to manage the potential hundreds of millions that could be disbursed under the program.

“Corruption in Albania remains endemic and entrenched at all levels of government and society,” he wrote on November 13, 2009.

Withers acknowledged an increase in trials for corruption, but said those were mainly for lower-level government officials, while Prime Minister Sali Berisha and his family, high level opposition figures, and numerous parliamentarians were perpetrating large scale corruption without punishment.

He said he had serious doubts that the money would be spent according to the MCC’s aid priorities.

“Without a tight oversight mechanism, the Embassy cannot be sure that substantial

amounts of US taxpayer money would not go to wrongful and illegal uses,” he cautioned.

He also warned that the Albanian “lacks the necessary expertise and bureaucratic structures necessary to manage its money in all but the most elementary ways.”

The MCC made two grants to Albania for $13.8 million and $15.7 million in 2006 and 2008 respectively, but becoming a “compact member” would have made it eligible for hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.  However, that aid was never extended even though Albania met the criteria, possibly because of Withers’ cable.