Eurasia Press & News
Prosecutors in Kosovo have shelved an investigation based on an internal audit at the Kosovo intelligence agency that identified nearly two million euros of alleged undocumented spending under three former directors, BIRN has found.
An internal audit at Kosovo’s state intelligence agency, AKI, identified undocumented spending of some two million euros from a ‘special operations fund’ under three former directors between 2017 and 2020, but prosecutors closed their investigation citing the statute of limitations and a lack of evidence, BIRN can reveal.
Based on the internal audit, the AKI submitted its findings to Kosovo’s Special Prosecution in July 2024, raising concerns about the conduct of former directors Driton Gashi, Shpend Maxhuni, and Kreshnik Gashi.
The findings included an alleged 350,000-euro cash withdrawal from the fund by Driton Gashi on April 10, 2018, the day he resigned as AKI director.
The AKI’s chief inspector, Kujtim Shala, said the agency had not yet received formal notification that the prosecution had closed the case but it said it would appeal when it does.
“The inspection report concludes that the amount for which there are well-founded suspicions that it was spent unlawfully, was obtained by various individuals,” Shala told BIRN. “There is no recorded data or information obtained, managed, or used by the AKI that is related to or references these expenditures.”
“Even worse, for some of them neither the destination nor the final beneficiary is known.”
The Special Prosecution said that in the case concerning Driton Gashi and Maxhuni, a five-year statute of limitations for the alleged offences had expired, and that no evidence of criminal wrongdoing was found in the case of Kreshnik Gashi, so the investigation was dropped.
No paper trail
According to information obtained by BIRN, based on the findings of the internal report, and confirmed by Shala, the three directors oversaw a special fund for secret missions, but failed to keep a paper trail of spending.
Between 2017 and 2020, the fund doubled in size from one million euros to two million.
Shala, who took on his role in 2022, told BIRN that in February 2025 he responded to an invitation from the Special Prosecution to give evidence about what he described as “well-founded suspicions… regarding the misuse of the AKI budget”.
The audit found that Driton Gashi, who ran AKI in 2017-2018, spent more than a million euros from the fund, but only half of which can be traced. This included a 350,000-euro cash withdrawal on the day he resigned.
“There is no record of the destination of these funds,” said Shala. “The incident occurred on the director’s last day in office. It’s up to the prosecution to answer where the money went.”
Gashi, who was convicted of abuse of office in 2023 in a separate case concerning the controversial deportation of five Turkish nationals, only for the verdict to be overturned and a retrial ordered, refused to be drawn on the allegations, and accused Shala of playing “games”.
“I have nothing to say to the media until I receive something official,” he said by phone. After resigning from the AKI, Gashi worked as Secretary of the Kosovo President when Hashim Thaci, currently on trial for war crimes in The Hague, was president. He was dismissed in March 2021 by current president Vjosa Osmani.
Services ‘not for public disclosure’
Shala confirmed that the internal AKI report found that, during Driton Gashi’s brief tenure, roughly half a million euros was given to Fatmir Sheholli, head of the Pristina-based Institute for Advancing Interethnic Relations and previously an employee of the Ministry of Returns and Communities.
In late 2023, Prime Minister Albin Kurti described Sheholli as a “collaborator” with Serbia during the 1998-99 Kosovo war, when he worked with Serbian-run media outlets.
The report identified another 139,000 euros as being transferred to Sheholli when Maxhuni was AKI director. Shala confirmed that Sheholli “is among those who benefitted from the unlawful actions”.
Contacted by BIRN, Sheholli confirmed having cooperated with AKI but denied being paid so much.
“We performed services that are not for public disclosure,” he said. “I cannot discuss the nature of my engagements with the Agency.”
Sheholli was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of espionage, two days after this story was first published in Albanian on the BIRN Kosovo website Kallxo.com.
His is the latest high-profile arrest of figures accused of collaborating with Serbian intelligence services.
Maxhuni, an adviser to the current general director of the Kosovo police, could not be reached for comment.
Lobbying funds?
During Maxhuni’s term, in 2018, the AKI internal audit identified another suspicious transaction – 300,000 euros allegedly transferred to then–Foreign Minister Behgjet Pacolli, a multi-millionaire Kosovo-Swiss construction tycoon widely considered Kosovo’s richest person.
The government had transferred 600,000 euros from the foreign ministry to the AKI in November 2018, half of which went into the agency’s special operations fund and was then, according to the internal audit, allegedly directed to Pacolli, the foreign minister.
“I have no idea about that report,” 74-year-old Pacolli, who heads a non-parliamentary political party, told BIRN. Asked whether he had received any money from AKI, Pacolli said the issue may be related to lobbying efforts to secure Kosovo’s accession to Interpol.
“If it’s about lobbying, then I think it might have been related to Interpol,” he said, but added: “Those funds have absolutely nothing to do with me. The money came from the ministry. Perhaps it was used to lobby certain countries to vote in favour of Kosovo; beyond that, I don’t know. I had no involvement in it.”
Two weeks after the alleged transfer, Kosovo’s bid for Interpol membership was rejected.
The audit also identified approximately 300,000 euros in undocumented spending during Kreshnik Gashi’s 2019-20 tenure, but the Special Prosecution said his actions “did not constitute the elements of the alleged criminal offence, nor of any other criminal offence prosecuted ex officio”.
Kreshnik Gashi told BIRN: “No misuse occurred. Every expenditure was legal.”
