Albania: Klajdi Merkaj’s Sky ECC objections fail constitutional screening
On 23 February 2026 Albania’s Constitutional Court refused to refer Klajdi Merkaj’s complaint for a plenary hearing. Decision 58 concerns pre-trial detention, access to the case file and Sky ECC data supplied by France.
Merkaj is suspected of jointly laundering money in criminal investigation 75/2022. Challenging his pre-trial detention orders, he argued that the courts had not sufficiently explained how Sky ECC accounts were attributed to him. He also alleged that interception authorisations were missing and the defence had insufficient access to the evidence.
The majority considered those objections manifestly unfounded. It accepted the French data’s transfer through a mutual legal assistance request, referring to mutual trust between judicial authorities. According to the decision, restricted file access was connected to investigative secrecy and information concerning other people under investigation.
The ordinary courts’ reasons for detention also passed this constitutional review. Two judges, Sonila Bejtja and Sandër Beci, nevertheless wanted a plenary examination of the measure’s proportionality. They agreed with the majority on the other objections.
