From Sudja and her millions, only the lists now remain. The loan shark has been arrested and, along with her, almost the entire technical staff that for five years has handled several tens of millions of dollars has ended up in jail. From the Sude building, only ruins now remain — the long lists of clients who were never paid back. A chaotic archive that brings to mind the property deeds and mortgage documents found by the communist regime after the Second World War. Sudja’s fate is prison, but what is the fate of the thousands of people who entrusted their money to her? For now it seems anything but optimistic. Nevertheless, depositors have no choice but to hope and to take some comfort in the statements that reach their ears from Rrapush Xhaferri about helping Sudja. But money and documents proving its existence cannot be played with. Enver Hoxha did not do this to the expropriated, and this should not happen to Albanian citizens either, now that they too have lost their last savings behind the walls of Sudja’s pyramid. The fate of the clients’ lists is essential for the continuation of the long and difficult process of returning the money to its rightful owners. Although at present it would be very difficult to foresee a quick normalization, this cannot be a sufficient reason to misuse the documentation the company left behind. At the moment when justice began dealing with Sudja, the competent authorities should have made contact at its headquarters with all the years’ worth of documentation reflecting the financial transactions carried out with clients. It is not known whether this valuable material was taken into custody and archived without being damaged or lost. One list can contain several tens of millions of old lekë and hundreds of registered clients. The lists found at the headquarters of the Sude firm are the first evidence and must be handled by justice when hearings begin on the lawsuits that have flooded the courts. It is true that the receipts issued by the loan shark were not accompanied by notarial deeds. They were not legally valid in formal terms, and this is one more reason to ensure the regularity of the documentation found at the collection counters. Tomorrow Albanian justice will have a great deal of work with the lawsuits against the collapsed usury firms. In order to prevent people from losing for a second time something they have painfully taken from their pockets and from their mouths, it is urgent that everything related to the practices and the documentation proving the deposits be archived. K.J

Photo: Reuter

Yesterday around 14:10 near the branch of the “Xhaferri” Foundation (near the “Gjallcia” polyclinic), a large number of creditors surrounded the car of the president of the “Xhaferri” Foundation, Mr. Rrapush Xhaferri, and demanded that he be overthrown, because he was not giving the creditors their money. At that moment the police and his bodyguards intervened and saved him from the blows of the people waiting for their money. The creditors’ anger reached its peak when it became known that the “Xhaferri” Foundation had gone bankrupt as well, after it blocked all its counters across the country, causing thousands of citizens to lose hope. “The General” returned home alone, the General. M.B.