Kosovo Albanians do not regret the money, Photo: EPA-EFE / MALTON DIBRA, Profimedia
The Kosovar Albanians had a kind of help in the powerful political circles of the United States during the preparation of the ground for the creation of their false Kosovo state and the unilateral declaration of independence. Analysts estimate that for decades, Albanians paid tens of millions of dollars for it through transparent lobbying deals, but also through various sinecuras.
Early eighties
The current Democratic candidate for president of the United States, Joe Biden, in the 1980s, as a senator in the United States Congress, was already defending the interests of the Kosovar Albanians and supporting their preparation of the ground for self-proclaimed independence. Considering that he is pro-Albanian, Biden now has significant support from Albanian voters in the United States.
Just one piece of evidence that American lobbyists for Albanian interests have been largely rewarded is the fact that Jim Gemma, an Albanian-born businessman, recently donated $ 500,000 to the Dole Institute, founded by the former senator. Kansas influencer Bob Dole, who was one of the first American politicians to bring the leaders attention to Kosovo.
Dol pointed out in the late 1980s that the majority of Kosovo’s population is Albanian and, according to our interlocutors, represented Albanian interests through the Albanian-American lobby in the United States.
photo: Courier
Diaspora help
Journalist and political commentator Milovan Jovanović tells Kurir that Albanians understood the importance and power of lobbying in the early 1980s and took it seriously.
– Republicans Joseph Diogardi and Robert Bob Dole are the founders of the Albanian-American lobby in the United States. In June 1986, Congressmen Tom Lantos and Henry Hyde presented to Congress Draft Resolution No. 150, in which they expressed concern about the position of Albanians in the former Yugoslavia. Three years later, Diogardi founded the Albanian-American Civic League. Since then, Diogardi and Dol, with the great financial help of the Albanian diaspora in America, have started promoting the goals of the league, whose symbol is the map of “Greater Albania” – says Jovanović.
Expensive surgery
It adds that after that, Diogardi and Dole actually became “informal ambassadors of the Kosovar Albanians in Washington”, and that their visits to Kosovo in the 1990s were accompanied by a large concentration of Albanians, who considered them fighters of the “Albanian cause” in America.
– Lobbying is a very expensive operation, for example, hiring an influential former congressman or senator who represents certain views and interests can cost more than $ 500,000 a year. Tens of millions of dollars were spent on official lobbying and more than a billion on unofficial channels, says Jovanović.
Nenad vukovic
Deserved lobbyists have become shareholders of the Kosovo economy
photo: screenshot
The president of the Association of Lobbyists of Serbia, Nenad Vukovic, told Kurir that American officials are obliged to denounce the lobbying.
– The contracts that appear and that we know are usually worth 100,000 to 200,000 dollars per year. Of course, the more problematic the lobbying goal, the larger the sums, and not everything is transparent. It should be noted that the Kosovo Albanians provided deserving lobbyists with lucrative and unsafe jobs and virtually provided them with the possibility of becoming shareholders in the Kosovo economy, says Vukovic.
