The moneylender repays only 15 people. The others threaten to use mines pages 2-3-4 Yesterday Sudja, berating her creditors: “Sleep peacefully, she will distribute the money according to a schedule.”

. Yesterday, a demonstration was held in Tirana for the first time since 28 May. Again, without the requisite permission from the police authorities. Foreign radio stations, the only ones to break the silence of the official media, loudly trumpeted in their broadcasts the tense atmosphere outside Sudja’s company offices, where hundreds of people were demanding their deposited money and cursing the government. Now nobody is thinking about how to win, but how not to lose. By now, quite a few Albanians have fallen into the trap of the pyramid-scheme mechanism, which has nonetheless not slowed the pace of deposits. Beyond the audacity of people who invest money in pyramid schemes, beyond the audacity of companies that take it without being sure they can return it, for these four years there has been a third “party” — the state, which has been a player in this game of dice. A statement by the country’s top finance official on the eve of the elections, a formal law after 20 October, and the president’s repeated assurances about the cleanliness of the deposited money — this is the extent of state intervention to date in an extremely delicate problem, which the authorities have regularly described as a “private matter between citizens and companies.” By warning in hushed tones that investing money in pyramid schemes is dangerous and calling on people to deposit it in state banks, the Albanian state has considered its duty done. But if Pilate washed his hands, that does not mean he was innocent. The Albanian government and the DP benefited from the pyramid schemes before and after the May elections. Faced with a desperate financial situation as their mandate was coming to an end, the Democrats readily accepted the pyramid-scheme compromise. On 20 October, the opposition complained about abstentions and the large absence of voters from the ballot boxes (continued on page 24)

Yesterday Sudja, berating her creditors: “Sleep peacefully, she will distribute the money according to a schedule.” Photo: G. Shkullaku

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