Vangjush Dako

In December last year, Albania's High Court overturned a decision by the country's Appeals Court which, five years earlier, had freed a notorious underworld figure called Lulzim Berisha.

Former Albanian prime minister Sali Berisha. Photo: LSA

Berisha is the fourth Albanian to be added to the list of people unwelcome in the US after former General Prosecutor Adriatik Llalla, former Socialist Party mayor Vangjush Dako and the current Social Democratic Party head, Tom Doshi.

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.

Albania's opposition leader Lulzim Basha said on Friday that he wants an in-depth investigation into alleged vote-buying by the ruling Socialists, claiming that the party secured its comfortable victory in the 2017 elections through collaboration with criminals.

The prosecutor's office has demanded the removal of 2,800 names from the electoral roll in Durres after an investigation revealed that the mayor had added thousands of non-resident voters to the list, based on falsified on rent contracts with a company owned by the municipality.