You are here » Home » Telling Our Story
Success Story
New agency ensures
transparency and
accountability
Rooting Out Government Corruption
Photo: CAO
A popular poster in Tirana urges
Albanians not to trade their rights for
money.
Albania loses about $1.2 billion a year because of graft and
unpaid taxes. Its regulatory system is not transparent, and its
rules are often inconsistent, leading to unreliable interpretation.
But in 2004, the Albanian government sacked a high-level
Transportation Department official after an audit of his assets
revealed he owned the country’s largest asphalt company. And
in the months leading up to the July 3, 2005, parliamentary
elections, journalists began to ask for the records and assets of
public officials. In May, two months after the official deadline for
asset declaration submissions, fines were issued to 84 public
officials who were late with their submissions.
Formerly a closed society, Albania has begun to expose
conflicts of interest and work to improve transparency and
accountability among its public officials. Fatmira Laskaj, a
former judge who now heads the High Inspectorate on the
Declaration and Audit of Assets (HIDAA), analyzes and hands
over suspicious cases to the Prosecutor General Office. As a
result of Fatmira’s work, some officials have been dismissed,
others prosecuted.
“It is difficult to change the attitude of officials to declare their
assets,” said Fatmira, but attitudes are changing.
Created by legislation recommended by a USAID-supported
coalition of organizations, HIDAA is the first agency of its kind in
Albania. It audits all public officials on two-year intervals, and its
mandate was recently enlarged to include the implementation
of a new conflict of interest law. USAID has provided HIDAA
with computers, scanners and other equipment, and it helped
design declaration forms and put in place a state-of-the art
information management system that includes an official Web
site. USAID also trains inspectors and provides technical
assistance, training and small grants to anticorruption
organizations such as the Albanian Coalition Against Corruption
and the Citizens Advocacy Office.
Print-friendly version of this page (244kb - PDF)
Click here for high-res photo
Back to Top ^ | 
