Lack of lawyers causes trial against Erion Veliaj to be postponed

The second court hearing on the criminal case against the Mayor of Tirana, Erion Veliaj, his wife, Ajola Xoxa and other defendants who are being tried under the ordinary procedure, was postponed again on Wednesday, June 10 due to the absence of four lawyers. During the appeal, the presiding judge, Elsa Ulliri, noted that lawyers Maksim Haxhiaj, Aranit Roshi, Dritan Jahaj and Ardit Canaj were absent. According to the judge, some of them were in another hearing that was taking place at the Special Court of First Instance. Judge Ulliri pointed out that this situation was repeated and requested that the lawyers take measures to be present at future hearings. The parties have not yet filed preliminary requests in this trial.

At the beginning of the hearing, the court rejected the request submitted by several journalists to broadcast the entire hearing live. According to the court, the journalists' request is repetitive and that they have not presented any new elements that would make live broadcasting of the hearing necessary.

Meanwhile, Presiding Judge Ulliri announced that the court has decided to make 24 files of the investigative file available to Veliaj that were not previously provided to him.

Veliaj's defense attorney, lawyer Plarent Ndreca, considered it unfair that, due to the lack of lawyers going to another trial, the detention terms of the person he represented should be suspended.

He further described the court's decision to reject the journalists' request to broadcast the hearing live as related to the due process of law. According to him, the decision to issue the decision without considering the parties' position on the publicity of the hearing is directly related to the legal aspect of the process. Ndreca underlined that the decision was taken in violation of the process, without the panel of judges having yet been introduced. He also stated to the media, after the hearing, that they had addressed the High Judicial Council with a request to declare invalid the determination in an instruction, which according to Ndreca, is being used to prevent transparency.

Lawyer Ndreca stated that they will request that Veliaj be removed from the glass booth, so that he can be present at the hearing and stay with his lawyer. According to Ndreca, it is Veliaj's constitutional right to stay outside the glass booth and that this has also been established by the Albanian Helsinki Committee.

Even Veliaj, in the statement submitted to the court for his absence that was read by the presiding judge, had cited as the reason the fact that he is not allowed to stay outside the glass booth.

At the end of the hearing, Ndreca asked the court to give them the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the digital evidence.

As assessed by the prosecutor in the case, Ols Dado, the court decided to postpone the session due to the lack of lawyers and announced that the next session will take place on June 16, at 10:00.

The preliminary hearing in Veliaj's case was postponed for several months, while there were also several postponements of the trial on the merits, before it was decided to divide the file with the defendants continuing with a summary trial and the others with a regular trial. SPAK has raised concerns about the postponements at the time, describing them as a strategy to drag out the process.

In the file separated from that of Mayor Veliaj due to the summary trial, the Special Prosecution Office presented its final conclusions a week ago, when it requested fines or suspended prison sentences, with the exception of businessman Elman Abule. For the former socialist MP, Klotilda Bushka, accused of having, together with her spouses Erion Veliaj and Ajola Xoxa, undertaken a coordinated campaign to intimidate witnesses and investigators, a fine of 600 thousand lek was requested and, in the application of the summary trial, a final measure of 400 thousand lek fine.

Erion Veliaj was arrested on February 10, 2025, after being accused of, together with his wife Ajola Xoxa, building a complex corruption and money laundering scheme to illegally benefit from the capital's municipality funds and bribes from its businessmen contractors, using a network of companies and non-profit organizations.