Slovenian journalist Luka Pers for Kosovo Online: How the affair centered on Albin Kurti was exposed

Slovenian journalist Luka Pers, whose "Prava" portal was among the first to write about the corruption affair of Pristina's ambassador to Croatia, Martin Berishaj, which is centered on Kosovo's Prime Minister Albin Kurti, states for Kosovo Online that Ambassador Berishaj, only in 2019 and 2020 raised more than half a million euros, which are suspected to have been obtained from the company GEN, which is the main distributor of electricity in Slovenia.

The Kosovo Corruption Agency filed a criminal complaint against Berishaj, and the media reported that he had received at least 1.5 million euros from the GEN Company from 2019 to April 2022, avoiding taxes. The opposition in Pristina claims that Prime Minister Albin Kurti is behind everything and that even 14 million euros were transferred by the aforementioned company for his election campaign.

"At the center of the story is the Kosovo ambassador to Croatia, Martin Berishaj. Television Planet TV from Slovenia revealed that in 2019 and 2020, he had raised more than half a million euros with at least 13 cash withdrawals. On the ERAR online application, it was discovered that through the Slovenian GEN, from August to December 2019, through its subsidiary in Belgrade, he had withdrawn more than four million euros in several transfers. We can very likely conclude that part of Berishaj's withdrawn cash came directly from Slovenia," Pers says.

Our interlocutor states that he saw the information in several foreign media that money from GEN had entered the election campaign of the current Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti.

"As I recall, it was first reported by the Kosovo media. They also spoke about it in the Kosovo investigative parliamentary commission. But one of the best Slovenian investigative journalists, Bojan Pozar, wrote that part of the money should go to Kosovo, for Kurti; Tatjana Bobnar, former minister of interior in the government of Robert Golob, resigned. Pozar also claims that it would be very difficult for the current Slovenian Prime Minister Golob to stop the investigation, even if he dismissed half of the police. Personally, I am very suspicious why GEN, in two bank operations, transferred more than 10 million euros with several transfers to the subsidiary in Tirana in 2021," Pers says.

Involved and former member of Barack Obama's administration

As Pers says, "the common actor in the whole story" is a former member of the staff of US President Barack Obama, Arun Chaudhary.

"He helped Albin Kurti's campaign in 2021 and the referendum campaign in Slovenia on the Waters Act. The main initiator of the referendum was the non-governmental organization “8th  March”. The central leader of “8th March” is Barack Obama Foundation scholarship holder Nika Kovac. She was among the first on official visits to the current Prime Minister of Slovenia, Robert Golob. You may wonder why GEN, in Tirana, needed such a sum of money and why they spent it. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Slovenian company GEN transferred funds to a subsidiary in Sarajevo; from 2015 to 2020 more than 60 million euros," Pers says.

According to him, a 250-page indictment had been written in one of the European countries.

"My foreign intelligence sources told me that a 250-page criminal complaint had been filed in one of the European countries against the Balkan electro cartel. GEN is exposed in it on more than twenty pages. There are all the transactions between the Balkan electro players in the last 20 years. It is estimated that five billion euros had disappeared in the Balkans in electricity deals. I want to believe that the data is not correct. Otherwise, we will experience one of the worst financial scandals in the Balkans," Pers believes.

Pers also referred to the accusations of the spokesperson of the Kosovo government, Perparim Kryeziu.

"I just want to inform the respected representative of the Kosovo government, Perparim Kryeziu, that the 'suspicious media' have all the information about the Berishaj’s affair and the 'missing' 100 million euros, and this came based on reports from other media and officially published public data," Pers concluded.