US Embassy Threatens to Sanction ‘Corrupt’ Albanian Officials

The US embassy in Tirana said on Tuesday that it is working on a blacklist of current and former officials in Albania who it considers corrupt and to be working against the interests of the United States.

"The Department of State has just started to use its authority granted by [section] 7031(c) [of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Act] against current and former Albanian corrupt officials," the embassy warned in a video it published on Facebook.

"Current and former corrupt officials and their families risk losing the privilege of entering the US in the future," it added.

It said that more cases were coming after three Albanian officials were previously banned from entering the US.

The embassy did not specify who it was considering adding to the list, or what sparked the move.

Section 7031(c) says that, in cases where the US Secretary of State has credible information that officials of foreign governments have been involved in significant corruption, they and their immediate family members are ineligible for entry into the United States.

The first of the three Albanians barred from entering the US under this clause was former General Prosecutor Adriatik Llalla, who was accused of being "an enemy of justice reform" which is currently being implemented in Albania to combat high-level corruption.

The second was Tom Doshi, a controversial businessman and member of the Albanian parliament since 2005. Most recently the ban was applied to Vangjush Dako, an Albanian socialist mayor, who was sanctioned in July 2019 "due to involvement in significant corruption".

There are about 100 people around the world who have been barred from entering the US under Section 7031(c). Of the Balkan citizens...