Gjergj ErebaraTiranaBIRNFebruary 2, 202317:09Opposition MPs want a parliamentary investigative committee to prope claims that PM Edi Rama had a former FBI official Charles McGonigal in his pocket, and used him to smear the opposition.
Albania parliamentary Session on Thursday, 2 February 2023. Photo: LSA
Albania’s opposition Democratic Party has filed a request for a parliament’s investigative committee on Thursday, after Prime Minister Edi Rama dismissed claims that his government bribed a former FBI official to push for FBI investigations into matters that damaged the Albanian opposition.
The request said it should investigate relations between Rama and Charles McGonigal, the nature of that relationship and any possible benefits granted to him or people connected to him by the Albanian government.
The request calls for an investigation into whether the Tirana government “incited, influenced, ordered or used public assets, bribes or other favours for the FBI former agent at the expense of the opposition”.
It also wants to investigate whether the government favoured the business connections of McGonigal and other people connected to him, with the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
On Thursday, the opposition called for Rama to be questioned before a plenary session. Rama refused to attend, claiming he was too busy. He dismissed the opposition claims in a Twitter post.
“This is complete abuse of freedom of the speech, of the truth, of the public,” Rama wrote. “Extreme slanderous statements are being used to manipulate public opinion on a matter investigated by US Justice that has been handled to the courts and has absolutely nothing to do with us here,” he added.
McGonigal, who worked for 20 years at the FBI and retired as chief of the New York Counterintelligence Division faces two separate sets of charges, one in New York and another in Washington DC.
He is charged in New York with breaking the law by working for Deripaska, a Russian oligarch. The other charges claim he failed to disclose his relations with the Albanian government, several Albanian citizens and with a Kosovo politician and two Bosnian politicians.
Prosecutors believe that in August 2017, McGonigal met Agron Neza, an Albanian-born naturalized American, who was described in the indictment as Person A, “and inquired as to whether Person A could provide money for him”.
Over the following months, Neza handed him three tranches of cash, totaling to $225,000 US. Along with Neza, McGonigal traveled to Albania several times, with their expenses covered, met Rama in Tirana and dinned with him in Washington, and opened investigations into the Albanian opposition over the alleged financing by Russian money of its US lobbying effort.
In September 2018, McGonigal resigned from the FBI. In April 2019, he and three associates joined an Albanian law firm. The business folded without much success.
As for the 225,000 US dollars that Neza handled to him in autumn 2017, while he was with the FBI, Neza told Albanian media that it was a private matter, while Rama described it as borrowed money.
The Albanian opposition claim the fact that McGonigal was received in Albania with covered expenses, and the fact that he failed to tell the FBI about the 225,000 dollars he received from Neza, show he was in the pocket of the Rama government and used by it against the opposition.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
