On Thursday, Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti, in coordination with acting Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani, dismissed the chief of the Kosovo Intelligence Agency, KIA, Kreshnik Gashi, allegedly over attempts to obtain confidential documents from the President’s office.

Gashi’s dismissal comes after an incident in which a KIA inspector was allegedly found in the President’s office on November 6, trying to obtain confidential information from the safe, together with former intelligence chief Driton Gashi.

Driton Gashi previously served as secretary to the recently departed president, Hashim Thaci, who resigned on November 5 to face war crimes charges at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers.

Bekim Kupina, a media advisor to Acting President Osmani told BIRN that “there was coordination and full agreement between acting President Vjosa Osmani, and Prime Minister Hoti on relieving the KIA director of his duties.”

On the first day of a three-day official visit to Albania on Thursday, Osmani, also Speaker of the Kosovo Assembly, told TV channel Euronews Albania that she was aware of the circumstances that led to Gashi’s dismissal.

“I know the reasons [for the dismissal] but this is a sensitive process, so I don’t think it is right for me to speak in detail – it was a process that was discussed and coordinated earlier,” she said.

Another of Osmani’s advisers, Faton Peci, however, told Kosovo TV channel Klan Kosova that on November 6, he found Driton Gashi in the President’s office trying to “open the safe” ahead of a suspected raid by EU officials. 

Peci said Driton Gashi had warned that officers from the EU rule-of-law mission, EULEX, were about to raid the office.

“We moved to the office of the Speaker and canceled some meetings. While we were talking in the office of the Assembly, the President informed me that I am responsible for what happens in the Office of President, so I went to see what the developments were … on the announced [EULEX] action,” Peci said.

He said he found an unidentified KIA inspector trying to open the safe in the President’s office, while Driton Gashi was on the phone. Peci said that Gashi told him: “I do not want these documents to fall into the hands of EULEX.” 

Driton Gashi denied the whole story to Klan Kosova earlier on Thursday. “The idea that the safe was opened and there was abuse of authorisations is a lie,” he said.

Despite his own lack of direct involvement, Kreshnik Gashi, who succeeded Driton Gashi as KIA chief, was asked to resign on Thursday.

Driton Gashi was dismissed as head of the KIA in 2019 over the highly controversially deportations of six Turkish nationals in March 2018. Gashi had been present at Prishtina airport during the deportation.

Since 2009, Kosovo has had five different chiefs of intelligence but none have finished their mandate, all of them resigning with the exceptions of Driton, and now Kreshnik Gashi.