TIRANA, September 15 – US Ambassador to Tirana Yuri Kim met on Thursday with the head of the Central Election Commission (CEC), Ilirjan Celibashi and representatives of political parties to discuss the serious threat of secret Russian political funding and the threat it poses to democracy.
Kim said that the US will continue cooperation with the institutions in Albania to protect against Russian threats of secret funding for political parties.
The threat of secret Russian political financing underscores the importance of increased transparency in campaign financing, registration of foreign entities, and measures to identify and prevent money laundering, said the US Ambassador in a post on social networks.
Kim pledged that the United States will continue to work with partners in all democratic institutions of Albania to protect against these threats.
Such a message is conveyed against the background of the release of a newswire by a US state department source two days ago claiming that the Democratic Party (DP) received 500,000 dollars to be used in the parliamentary poll in 2917 when Lulzim Basha was head of that party. The US Embassy was blamed by DP officials and some analysts that it was aware of this case and interfered to close it in support of Basha and the deal he had made with the PM, Edi Rama.
The US Embassy has not made any comments on the accusations. /Argumentum.al
