Prosecutors have proposed filing charges against the only Albanian member of the Serbian Parliament, Shaip Kamberi. They expect to charge him with “exceeding budget” for the year 2018, when Kamberi was the mayor of Bujanovac, a Serbian town with an Albanian ethnic majority.
The MP made the announcement after receiving information from the Special Prosecution Office of Nis.
The Albanian MP said that the announcement of a motion for indictment against him was made to tarnish his image. He said that the case that is expected to appear in court belongs to the time he was mayor of Bujanovac. Kamberi explained that he had signed an infrastructure project that would be implemented over one year, thus exceeding that year’s budget – a normal procedure in all small municipalities with small budgets. “Otherwise, small municipalities would never be able to implement any big project,” he stated. However, prosecutors have singled him out for prosecution, he said, while categorically denying any abuse with funds.
“It’s interesting how in a state where mafia and organized crime ties to power are an everyday event, the Special Prosecution goes after me regarding a practice found in many municipalities in Serbia,” Kamberi noted.
“This comes only a few months before parliamentary elections,” he added, “which shows that I am not getting this treatment not as a former Bujanovac mayor, but as an opposition member of the Serbian Parliament. According to the letter I received, the trial will start on March 17, but the point is that, in my opinion, by raising such charges, they are trying to stop my appearances in Parliament,” said Kamberi, who is the first deputy delivering a strong speech in Albanian in Serbian Parliament which angered the highest Serb authorities.
“I will also face this challenge which has been set before me and I will try to prove justice before this court and if it is a political attempt, I will respond with a political approach,” Kamberi said. /argumentum.al