Tirana Court declared guilty on Thursday the former Secretary General of the Ministry of Finance, Arlind Gjokutaj, who was accused for 'Abuse of office'. 

The court accepted the request of the prosecutor Ndini Tavani to declare Gjokutaj guilty and sentence him to two years in prison, but also decided to suspend the sentence and put the defendant on probation for a period of 2 years.

Arlind Gjokutaj was appointed as Secretary General of the Ministry of Finance and Economy in October 2021. 

Investigation against him began based on a second-tier bank report on an outstanding loan, which revealed that Thana was repaid twice for a property purchased in 1992 that was returned to the former owner a few years later. Ilir Thana, through a court decision, managed to get the money spent on the purchase of the warehouse, according to the price index.

The investigation showed that the police station bought in 1992 for the price of 103,000 lek a building + land from the Directorate of Government Service and Privatization Agency, but following a civil court process, the Tirana Court of Appeal decided to return the parties to the state the previous one. The court has decided that the value of the purchased buildings, converted with the price increase index at the time of execution of the decision, will be returned to Thana.

The investigations showed that Thana was not satisfied with that, but sought to be rewarded in the capacity of the former owner of the warehouse and the land, although he never had this status. He then turned to an enforcement office which assessed the warehouse at the value of 70 million Lek, but failed to carry out the execution. Even another court bailiff who assessed the object in the amount of 82 million lek was unable to execute it, while the third bailiff assessed it at 145.8 million lek and started the execution of this value in favor of Thana, in the capacity of the former owner. of assets.

The prosecution announced after the proceedings of Gjokutaj, that when the latter had signed the order for the recovery of the value requested by the third executor, even though an official of the Ministry of Finance sent him a memo informing him of the fact that the decision of the final form of the Tirana Appeal was not executed in 2015 and that the amount of ALL 145.8 million could not be paid in favor of Thana.