Zejnullah Gashi assumed place of work as Kosovo’s Chief Express Prosecutor on Wednesday following a decision job that is supposed to dangle failed to meet requirements on transparency, advantage-primarily primarily based evaluation and integrity assessments, in step with a fable by BIRN Kosovo and Internews Kosova monitors.
“I can be a Chief Express Prosecutor for all people, and together we are going to have the option to work to increase the guideline of regulations,” Gashi said all the contrivance thru the ceremony.
Nonetheless within the fable examining the recruitment job, BIRN Kosovo and Internews Kosova concluded that the Kosovo Prosecutorial Council, KPC, conducted the appointment thru a job that cramped public catch admission to and didn’t check candidates’ integrity earlier than making its final decision.
Gashi has been Chief Prosecutor of the Pristina Standard Prosecution since 2023.
The Chief Prosecutor’s mandate is for seven years and begins four years after extinct Chief Prosecutor Aleksander Lumezi’s term resulted in 2022. Weak President Vjosa Osmani refused to decree one other candidate, Blerim Isufaj, for the jam, which has been held in an acting capacity since then.
Acting President Albulena Haxhiu signed the decree appointing Gashi on July 14, one day after the KPC nominated him.
“I demand Chief Prosecutor Gashi to support out this responsibility with the absolute best requirements of professional and stunning integrity, impartiality and braveness, continuously demonstrating solid dedication to the bid and its voters, in step with the Structure and regulations of the Republic of Kosovo,” Haxhiu wrote on Fb on Tuesday.
She claimed to dangle consulted experiences by civil society organisations monitoring the recruitment job earlier than signing the decree. On the opposite hand, BIRN Kosovo and Internews Kosova had been not contacted or asked to point to their luxuriate in findings.
In some unspecified time in the future of the outdated recruitment job, then-President Osmani declined to nominate Blerim Isufaj as Chief Express Prosecutor after BIRN Kosovo and Internews Kosova equipped concerns in regards to the integrity of the technique.
The KPC launched the detailed evaluation paperwork on July 13 when it nominated Gashi, so depriving civil society of the replacement to gaze the critiques earlier than the choice used to be made.
In decision to publishing every evaluator’s customary scoring sheets and detailed explanations, the KPC launched only a summary of panel participants’ reasoning.
In outdated advantage-primarily primarily based recruitment processes they monitored underneath a project supported by the British Embassy, evaluation panels disclosed and defined the scores awarded to every candidate earlier than the monitoring organisations performed their assessments.
BIRN Kosovo and Internews Kosova requested catch admission to to the particular individual scoring sheets and written justifications from every evaluation panel member on July 6 and the KPC had scheduled catch admission to to these paperwork for July 13 – but then cancelled the meeting shortly earlier than it took jam.
Surely one of the most key findings of the BIRN fable pertains to the evaluation of candidates’ integrity.
In keeping with BIRN and Internews Kosova, all 5 candidates bought the utmost ranking of 20 for integrity. On the opposite hand, the panel didn’t behavior any more overview of allegations towards the candidates’ luxuriate in statements.
In some unspecified time in the future of his interview for the jam on July 1, Gashi said that “neither I nor my family dangle ever been fascinated by anything else that can presumably undermine our integrity, whether or not non-public or institutional”.
In Can also this year, on the opposite hand, a BIRN investigation showed that in 2021 Gashi visited then acting Justice Minister Albulena Haxhiu with out being invited, in an strive to elaborate an ongoing corruption investigation though-provoking an reliable.
Gashi has claimed that most up-to-date articles printed by BIRN in Kosovo contained “deceptive allegations that harmed my professional integrity and created a counterfeit public thought.”