Artan Gjermeni resigned today as the lawyer of Tirana Mayor Erion Veliaj after the court rejected his request for his client Erion Veliaj to be familiarized with the files.

In the lunch program at News24 with Ola Bruko, the lawyer said that there is not enough evidence to send the Tirana mayor's file to court.

Artan Gjermeni: I have a full understanding of the level of evidence. Is there sufficient evidence to support the charge for sending the case to trial? For me, there is not. There must be a causal link between the specific action, the signing of a routine invoice, and a corresponding consequence. So, the causal link is missing.

That's all I can say today about the promise we gave to SPAK that we will not release any detailed information.

Artan Germeni: I resigned at this stage of the process also as a reaction to the non-acceptance of an elementary legal request, To be acquainted with the acts of the file, says Veliaj. When this request was reacted to, this was also a kind of reaction. I stayed in the courtroom until the end of the trial, and on January 5 I will be in the trial again, until the other lawyer who has been appointed by the court, is available for the articulation that she will make for Veliaj. The moment she articulates and covers, at that moment my functions cease. I will then consult with her whether we will continue the cooperation or not. The elementary thing in the preliminary hearing is the guarantee of procedural rights for the mayor of Tirana, Erion Veliaj. The law provides that the case can be dismissed on the merits for lack of evidence, but a decision of the Supreme Court from 2 years ago came out above the law and states that the case cannot be dismissed in the preliminary hearing without analyzing the evidence.

If there is any monitoring throughout the Republic, is there any case dismissed in a preliminary hearing by the judges as a filter for the investigation? Zero. There is none. Either the defendant must die or an amnesty must be issued. The law is no longer applied for the case to be dismissed in a preliminary hearing. The Supreme Court resolved it in a way that is, in my opinion, clearly unfair and here are the consequences for the entire system. The preliminary hearing, when it was set up, had a purpose, the investigation filter, this filter is now missing, it no longer exists, the Supreme Court did it, in my opinion they made a serious mistake.