CNA has published recordings in which Irfan Hysenbelliu and his adviser describe a claim of 300 to 600 million euros against Albania, an arbitrator secured in advance, six prosecution files closed as a favour and fictitious invoices inside the media group. Read against the public record and the Criminal Code, the tape describes four offences, two of them already partly documented by the state.
Tirana Examiner Newsroom
Between 28 and 30 October, CNA.al published four articles and a seven-minute video on Irfan Hysenbelliu, the owner of the News 24 and Panorama group. The video, according to CNA, is built from recorded conversations with Hysenbelliu himself, with his adviser Ardian Xhyheri, and with a woman CNA names as Ornela Molla, speaking about the group’s invoicing. CNA has not said who recorded the conversations or how it obtained them; this publication has not seen the recordings and attributes every quotation below to CNA. The transcript CNA published has the interlocutors asking questions through Xhyheri as translator, and CNA’s 29 October article names who they were talking to: a law firm it calls “William Hale”, which it says offered to help find investors for an arbitration claim against Albania; “Blank Rome”, a US firm; a company it calls “Omni” in England; and “FTI”, which produced the damages report. The recordings are of a man and his adviser pitching a claim against the Republic of Albania to people they believed were going to finance it.
Xhyheri has been here before. In April 1995 he stood trial in Tirana as a former director of the state Trade Bank, alongside former Prime Minister Vilson Ahmeti and former central bank governor Ilir Hoti, on charges of misappropriating $1.2 million the state had set aside to pay a French debt negotiator. He has since been in business, and in recent years, by CNA’s account and his own words on the tape, at Hysenbelliu’s side.
What the tape says, according to CNA
The claim. CNA quotes Hysenbelliu: “Minimum 300 million euros up to 600 million euros” (“Minimumi 300 milionë euro deri në 600 milionë euro”). It quotes Xhyheri on the FTI report: the woman did something extra “to make it look bigger, to look more frightening for the government” (“për t’u dukur më e madhe, për t’u dukur më e frikshme për qeverinë”). CNA’s sources say the report was inflated to around 500 million so that a settlement of 150 to 200 million could be reached, the sum Hysenbelliu would accept.
The judge.CNA quotes Xhyheri saying only the lawyer knew who the arbitrator was, that the lawyer had guaranteed it “a thousand per cent” (“1 mijë për qind”), and that they had taken a judge without telling the clients, to see how things stood. Asked whether that judge would decide in their favour one hundred per cent: “Absolutely. It is not public” (“Absolutisht. Nuk është publike”).
The prosecutors.CNA quotes Xhyheri: Hysenbelliu “had six files. Those cases were closed at the prosecution. Because of the goodwill of that gentleman there” (“Ai kishte 6 dosje. Ato raste janë mbyllur në prokurori. Sepse ishte dëshira e mirë nga ai zotëria atje”). Asked whether he meant the prosecutor: yes. On the chief prosecutor of Tirana: “Of course, of course… they have lunches, they take summer holidays. They protect each other” (“Sigurisht, sigurisht… ata hanë dreka, ata bëjnë pushime verore. Ata mbrojnë njëri-tjetrin”).
The currency.CNA quotes Xhyheri on what officials receive: media support, interviews, protection in the newspaper when they are under attack, and personal favours, “a favour in the hospital, a favour at the school exam the grandson or granddaughter had” (“u bëni atyre një favor në spital, u bëni atyre një favor te provimi shkollor që kishte nipi ose mbesa”). Hysenbelliu himself, in CNA’s transcript: the most senior people in the justice system greet him in restaurants and come to eat at his table; “I used to get things done with one phone call” (“Mbaroja punë me një telefon”).
The invoices. CNA quotes the woman it identifies as Ornela Molla explaining that the group could issue an invoice from News 24, the television or the newspaper “that is not real”, for instance an advertisement for Birra Tirana, and use it to move money to another company, because neither side owed the other anything. She is also quoted on a cash arrangement to pay 900 instead of one million, for which “he asks a reward”.
What the record says
The claim has a history. On 4 December 2022 the National Territory Protection Inspectorate blew up Prestige Resort, Hysenbelliu’s seven-storey hotel on the Kavajë coast, as an illegal construction; the company had filed in the Durrës Administrative Court three days earlier seeking a stay, no judge was assigned in time, and the episode appears in the US State Department’s human rights report for that year. By January 2025 Albanian media were reporting that Hysenbelliu was seeking €300 million from the state over the demolition. The second grievance came in August 2025, when police stopped News 24 and Panorama journalists entering the former Shkozë plant building, which a government decision of 12 March 2025 had transferred to the state arms company KAYO; the signal was cut the same morning. This week Gazeta Tema reported that Hysenbelliu has contacted major US and UK law firms to take the government to international arbitration over the Shkozë building. No case is registered at ICSID or on the UNCTAD dispute register as of today. The claim exists where CNA’s tape places it: in preparation, being sold to funders.
Blank Rome is a Washington and Philadelphia firm. FTI Consulting writes damages reports in investor-state cases. “Omni” in England reads like Omni Bridgeway, the litigation funder that already holds an arbitral award of roughly $13 million against Albania’s state oil company and is enforcing it in a Washington court. These are this publication’s identifications, not CNA’s.
The model Xhyheri describes is the model that worked against Albania once already. Francesco Becchetti claimed €650 million for the expropriation of Agon Channel and was awarded €110 million by an ICSID tribunal on 24 April 2019, plus €30 million to a partner; the annulment committee upheld the award on 2 April 2021, the Paris Court of Appeal rejected Albania’s challenge, and enforcement has run through Eurocontrol funds in Brussels and the courts in Vienna. Claim at six hundred, collect at a hundred and ten: that is the ratio CNA says Hysenbelliu’s camp was engineering, and it is the ratio Becchetti got.
The tax record is in the Tax Directorate’s own paper. In August 2022 the Directorate referred Birra Tirana sh.a. to the prosecution after a control found sales without tax documentation; the arrears that triggered the control were €1.7 million. In 2023 the Directorate’s letter put Albecorp sh.p.k., wholly Hysenbelliu’s, at 266 million lek, about €2.5 million, in evaded tax. On 29 May 2026 the Directorate announced the seizure of eight vehicles, a McLaren among them, from a Tirana taxpayer with €6.4 million in unpaid obligations run up since December 2024; it did not name the taxpayer, and the vehicles were reported to belong to Irfan and Fatmir Hysenbelliu. CNA’s own figure for the total debt to the state is around €20 million; the documented episodes alone come to more than €10 million.
Panorama TV, the channel CNA says has not broadcast for two years and still had its licence renewed by AMA this year, is on AMA’s register as 60% owned by Panda Group and 40% by Panorama Group, the latter held since June 2023 by Hysenbelliu’s children Fatmir and Fabiola, to whom he gifted the shares.
What the tape reveals
If the recordings are what CNA says they are, the conduct described on them corresponds to four offences in Albania’s Criminal Code.
The arbitrator. An arbitrator selected by the lawyer, guaranteed to decide for the claimant, and kept from the clients so that it would not become public, is active corruption of an arbitrator, Article 319/b, with the arbitrator’s own liability under 319/dh. Those articles were written into the Code when Albania ratified the Council of Europe’s Additional Protocol on corruption; they are rarely used because such arrangements are rarely spoken aloud. On the tape, by Xhyheri’s account, the lawyer did it and the clients were told only that it was done; that puts Hysenbelliu’s camp in the position of the knowing beneficiary, which the Code treats as complicity. The tape names no arbitrator, no forum, no lawyer and no payment. What it proves, so far, is that Xhyheri said it to people he wanted money from. That is worth something, since a man selling a claim has every reason to say the judge is his, and a man who says it when it is untrue is committing a different offence against the funders.
The inflated report. Procuring a damages report deliberately inflated to extract a settlement from the state is attempted fraud against the Republic, Articles 143 and 22, and lawyers and experts who knew are co-perpetrators. Standing alone this is thin: every claimant inflates, Becchetti claimed six times what he got, and tribunals discount for it. What moves it from advocacy to scheme is the sentence next to it. A number built to frighten the government, placed before an arbitrator who has already agreed to accept it, is no longer a negotiating position. On the tape the two sit side by side, and a prosecutor will read them together.
The six files. This is the heaviest part of the tape. A prosecutor of the Tirana office closing six cases out of “goodwill” toward a man who supplies coverage, protection in print and favours for relatives is passive corruption of a prosecutor, Article 319/ç, and on Hysenbelliu’s side active corruption, Article 319. Albanian law does not require cash to change hands; “any other improper benefit” is the statutory phrase, and a hospital bed or a grandchild’s exam is one. Xhyheri’s description of the relationship, lunches, summer holidays, “they protect each other”, is the description of a standing arrangement, which is also trafficking in influence, Article 245/1. Evidentially it is hearsay from an interested man about an unnamed prosecutor. The six files, however, are a fact in a register. The Tirana Prosecution Office’s records show which proceedings against Hysenbelliu’s companies were dismissed, by which prosecutor, on what date; the Tax Directorate’s August 2022 referral of Birra Tirana is one obvious candidate. If the dismissals are there and one name recurs, the tape stops being hearsay and becomes corroborated testimony. That is days of work.
The invoices.Molla’s account needs no hearsay discount, because she describes practice she took part in. Invoices between group companies for advertising never placed and services never rendered are forged documents, Article 186, used to understate or relocate income, which is concealment of income, Article 180. The cash arrangement, pay 900 instead of a million and someone takes a cut, is the same offence seen from the paying side. Money moved on the strength of such invoices is the proceeds of crime, and moving it between companies to make it usable is laundering, Article 287, which Albanian courts have applied to self-laundering since the 2012 amendments. The state already holds paper of its own here. In 2022 the Tax Directorate found goods sold without invoices at Birra Tirana; in 2023 it found €2.5 million evaded at Albecorp. Those are not the practice Molla describes, and one does not prove the other. What they establish is that the group’s paper and its trade have failed to match before. Molla describes a second method for the same result, and an inspector who already holds the first will know where to look for it.
Two things on the tape are not offences. Hysenbelliu’s remarks that the most senior people in the justice system come to his table, and that he once got things done with a phone call, are boasting in the past tense. They carry no criminal element. They are a disciplinary matter for every judge and prosecutor who sat at that table, under the ethics rules of the High Judicial and High Prosecutorial Councils, and a tribunal weighing the rest of the tape will not ignore them.
A conversation recorded by one of its participants is admissible as a document in Albanian criminal procedure; only a third party’s interception needs a court’s authorisation. If the funders recorded their own meeting, the tape can be used. If the funders were not funders at all, if this was a sting by a competitor, by the government or by CNA itself, that does not make the statements false, but it will be Hysenbelliu’s entire defence: entrapment, selective translation, context cut. CNA’s transcript is already edited and rendered into Albanian. In it, the sharpest formulations about the arbitrator come from the interlocutor, who puts the proposition, and Xhyheri answers “yes” and “absolutely”. A man agreeing to a funder’s leading question is weaker evidence than a man volunteering the fact. It is still a man agreeing, on tape, that the judge is his. Any prosecutor will want the full audio in its original language before registering a thing.
Jurisdiction settles itself. Corruption of judges, prosecutors and arbitrators is the exclusive competence of SPAK under Article 75/a of the Criminal Procedure Code. The tax and invoicing offences would ordinarily go to the Tirana Prosecution Office, which is the office the tape says was bought, and they reach SPAK only if they are shown to belong to the same arrangement as the corruption. That is one more reason the six files matter: they are the hinge on which the whole tape either stays in Tirana or moves to SPAK. CNA addressed its 30 October article to SPAK because, it wrote, the prosecutors of Tirana are “simply Irfan’s tools” (“thjesht vegla të Irfanit”). Whatever one thinks of the phrasing, the address is legally correct. The Tirana office cannot investigate a recording that accuses the Tirana office.
Each sentence on the tape can be answered on its own. The arbitrator is unnamed, the prosecutor is unnamed, the report is advocacy, the invoices are a bookkeeping dispute. Heard in sequence they answer each other. The same adviser, in one conversation, describes an arbitrator secured abroad, a prosecutor kept close at home, and false invoices to move the money in between. The Criminal Code has an article for that kind of arrangement, Article 333/a on structured criminal groups, and this publication does not say it applies. Whoever at SPAK listens to the full recording will have to say whether it does.
Hysenbelliu’s outlets had not responded to the video by the time of publication.
