The review of five candidacies for the leadership of the General Prosecution Office was accompanied by tensions in the High Prosecutorial Council, where instead of the filtering of names, a clash over conflict of interest came to the forefront. At the center of the debate is candidate Ylli Pjetërnikaj’s request to exclude HPC member Vatë Staka from the review and voting process.
The request that blocked the start of the review
According to documents made public, Pjetërnikaj is asking that Vatë Staka not take part in the assessment of his candidacy for Prosecutor General. His claim is tied to an institutional history that began in 2018, when he was heading the Shkodër Prosecution Office.
At that time, Pjetërnikaj ordered the establishment of a working group to inspect the institution’s archive. During the checks, according to the documents, missing criminal case files and interventions in several files were found, which led to the registration of a criminal proceeding for “Destruction or loss of the file.”
How Vatë Staka’s name is connected to the case
As part of that proceeding, material from the General Prosecution Office was also included, following an anonymous complaint related to Vatë Staka’s professional evaluation files, at the time a prosecutor in Shkodër.
Later, a second proceeding was also registered over another missing file, and both cases were merged into a single investigation. That combined investigation also included allegations that Vatë Staka had falsified procedural acts.
Pjetërnikaj has clarified that the proceeding was initiated by him in his capacity as head of the Shkodër Prosecution Office, while the investigation itself was assigned to another prosecutor.
The investigation was closed, but the clash remained
According to the official version of the submitted documents, the investigation into the falsification allegations was closed in February 2020, after the Shkodër Court decided to discontinue the criminal proceeding.
However, although the criminal case has been closed for years, it has now returned to the center of the race for the head of the prosecution service. Pjetërnikaj argues that his involvement in initiating the 2018 proceeding created an adversarial relationship between him and Staka that undermines impartiality in this process.
What the law provides on excluding a member
In the request filed with the HPC, the candidate refers to Law No. 115/2016 on the governance bodies of the justice system. He relies on Article 171, which requires a member to declare a conflict of interest and not take part in discussion or voting on the relevant matter.
Article 174 is also mentioned, which provides for recusal from an administrative proceeding when disputes exist between the member and the subject being evaluated, as well as Article 175, which gives the subject the right to request the member’s exclusion if the latter does not withdraw voluntarily.
In essence, the clash is not simply procedural. It raises questions about how the HPC guarantees impartiality in one of the most sensitive processes in the justice system, that of selecting the Prosecutor General.
It remains to be seen how the HPC will handle this request and whether the conflict-of-interest debate will actually affect the course of the race.
Beyond the legal interpretation, the case is also testing the standard of distance that justice institutions must maintain from any shadow of personal or institutional conflict.