Albanian Ex-Minister Faces Trial for Embezzlement

An Albanian court on Sunday remanded Ksera in custody after he was charged with misusing his authority to embezzling around 216,000 euro from a fund intended for social programmes, along with his subordinates.

Ksera was a member of the centre-right administration headed by former Prime Minister Sali Berisha until 2013.

He was arrested on Friday night in the village of Dervican on the outskirts of the town of Gjirokastra in southern Albania.

The probe started when the Supreme State Audit found a lack of documentation to prove that six social programmes claimed to have been implemented by his ministry in 2013 were actually carried out.

Ksera was the head of procurement for the activities, which were intended to help the Roma community, elderly and disabled people to integrate into society.

"From inspections of the activities' DVDs, we found out that the pictures inside were taken from other activities held on April 2013 for International Roma Day. These activities were supported and financed by UNDP [United Nations Development Project] Albania and not the ministry of labour," the prosecution said in a statement.

It added that pictures of other activities for socially vulnerable people were digitally altered by Ksera's subordinates to look like the labour ministry's own activities.

Prosecutors also found out that the ministry could not produce the receipts to prove they had spent what they claimed to have done on the activities.

Ksera was a representative of the Greek minority in Albania politics, and although he left the main Greek minority party, the PBDNJ, in 2009, he continued to collaborate with Berisha's government.

Berisha accused prosecutors of not following all the correct formal steps during the Ksera...