Kosovo Making Slow Progress on Ambitious E-Services Agenda

The ICMM is an independent agency dealing with mining activities while its closest government partner, Kosovo’s environment, spatial planning and infrastructure ministry, provides the most services of any ministry – roughly 80. Not one of those services is fully available online, however.

On average, each service requires more than 11 separate documents, and applicants can sometimes wait three months for a response. And then there are the fees.

Kosovo has set a target of 2030 to fully digitalise public services in the hope of unleashing economic growth, but experts say it has a very long way to go.

“More than 340 services provided by all ministries in Kosovo require the submission of 2,250 documents in total,” said Albana Rexha of the Pristina-based think tank Democracy Plus, which has researched digital services. “More than 66 per cent of these services… require payment.”

Agron Demi, director of the NGO Balkan Green Foundation, said only 18.7 of services provide for documents to be submitted online. The rest require the applicant to be present. Demi blamed a lack of IT infrastructure, limited human resources and insufficient coordination between institutions.

Despite the government’s rhetoric, Demi said that “only a small number of services are fully accessible online, and many still require physical submission of documents”. All this, he told BIRN, “slows down progress”.

Ambition not matched by capacity

Lulzon Jagxhiu, adviser to Kosovo’s Prime Minister. Photo: BIRN

Kosovo’s government has identified digitalisation as a key priority, with a goal of digitalising most services at both central and local levels of government within the next three years and going fully digital by 2030.

“By 2030, Kosovo aims to become a modern digital country with an advanced digital economy and effective public administration,” said Genc Hamzaj, head of the Kosovo Information Society Agency, the institution responsible for developing and implementing information technology in the public sector.

Hamzaj told BIRN that roughly 200 e-services have been launched so far, with hundreds more in the pipeline.

“These additional services will be available by the end of this year and throughout 2025,” he said. “The services that are digitalised and offered through the eKosova platform are simplified and automated, requiring fewer documents. Most services on eKosova are free or available at a lower cost than those obtained in person at offices.”

Lulezon Jagxhiu, IT adviser to Prime Minister Albin Kurti, said the process cannot be rushed and that Kosovo is simultaneously working to make sure the digitalisation is secure.

“Currently, there are 658 services in the catalogue of central government services, and our goal is to digitalise 50 per cent of services by 2027 and to fully digitalize all services by 2030,” Jagxhiu said. “However, this process requires re-engineering of services, and it affects hundreds of laws and secondary legislative acts, so it takes time.”

He noted that the total number of service transaction via eKosova had nearly doubled 3.82 million in 2023.

As part of the country’s cybersecurity strategy, a Cybersecurity Agency is in the works. Kosovo has also developed an Interoperability Platform connecting more than 50 government systems and storing its data in the State Data Centre.

“We are also piloting an important reform of transitioning to life-event approach to service delivery, whereby digital services are organized and provided based on the significant life events of the citizens, such as the birth of a child or the opening of a business,” said Jagxhiu.

Last month, in its annual report on Kosovo’s progress towards European Union accession, the European Commission cited progress in cutting red tape and the digital transformation, but it said that the digitalisation of public services remains at an early stage.

Kosovo’s Commissioner for Privacy and Information also warned of a worrying side-effect – officials citing the digitalisation process to withhold documents from the public.

“Officials at all levels are obligated not only to provide access to documents but also to publish them proactively,” Krenare Sogojeva Dermaku told BIRN. “Officials are justifying this decline by citing the digitalisation process. In terms of transparency, this has worsened the situation.”

Bosnia Vigilantes Targeting Alleged Paedophiles Gain Social Media Following


Members of Organisation Panther in Bosnia’s Capital, Sarajevo. Photo: Facebook/Organizacija Panter. 

Posing as underage teenagers online, a group of young vigilantes from Bosnia and Herzegovina has been luring men to meet-up spots all over the country for what it calls “a gentle conversation”.

Calling itself Organisation Panther (Organizacija Panter), the group records its actions of exposing alleged predators and paedophiles online and posts them on social media.

It has gained a significant social media following of more than 150,000 people across different channels, including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Telegram. 

The group started publishing videos at the end of October. The videos, seen by BIRN, show the group forcing men to admit that they are paedophiles and that they came to meet up with a teenager. In some videos, the group cuts the men’s hair while forcing them to call their families to confess their alleged misdeeds. 

The Panthers did not reply to BIRN’s request for an interview. However, in one of their few media appearances, on Bosnian Face TV, the group claimed to have “5,000-6,000 members all over the country”. BIRN could not independently verify these figures.

While the content of the videos might disturb some, the group describes its methods as “gentle petting”, intended to “teach a lesson”.

The group also says that usually the parents or friends of a child reach out and point out an alleged predator on social media, after which the group sends a “friend” or “follow” request, waiting for the communication to start. 

So far, the group has posted 17 videos on YouTube exposing eight alleged paedophiles. The videos have more than 2.5 million views on this social media platform alone. 

Asked by the TV host if the group notifies the police about the men it has exposed, the group said that “everyone supports their work” – and the group’s followers are the ones that forward reports to the police. 

Besides sharing videos on social media, the group shares information on the alleged paedophiles and predators in a Telegram group, which gives more details and evidence of the conversations the group had with them. 

The group started by helping abused animals, which remains a core part of its activities. During the October 2024 floods in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the group went to flooded areas and rescued animals while helping with clean-up operations at the same time. 

“We also help victims of domestic violence that reach out to us, we have a chat with them and we solve the problem,” the group said in the interview on Face TV. 

Police in Bosnia’s Federation entity told BIRN that they cannot provide details on any investigations into Organisation Panther, or the alleged paedophiles it has exposed. 

Public interest in the topic of paedophilia has increased since September, when news broke that a well-known actor, Moamer Kasumovic, had been sentenced to one year in prison for committing lewd acts with a minor in 2021. 

Kasumovic did not serve a single day of the sentence, as he had opted to pay a substitute fine of 100 Bosnian marks, or some 52 euros, per day of jail time. 

After paying 36,000 Bosnian marks, or around 18,400 euros, Kasumovic continued working in Sarajevo. After the story broke in mid-September, he lost all his TV roles. 

The law in Bosnia says prison terms of up to one year can be replaced with fines. That has prompted a petition to change the law, so that those sentenced for rape, paedophilia or lewd acts will not be able to pay instead of serving prison terms. 

Romania Enters Uncharted Political Waters After Election Debacle

Overturning Calin Georgescu’s shock win, the court said the election had been marred by “manipulation” by a “foreign state” through the unlawful use of digital technologies and artificial intelligence. Romania’s intelligence agency had claimed paid influencers had boosted TikTok accounts promoting Georgescu and reported over 85,000 cyberattacks during the election, saying the scale, methods and level of coordination strongly suggested the involvement of a foreign state.

Georgescu ran as an independent with little mainstream media coverage and a campaign focused almost exclusively on TikTok, yet he defied opinion polls to come out on top with 23 per cent of the vote.

Had the Court not annulled the vote, Georgescu would have contested a run-off on November 8 with Elena Lasconi, leader of the centrist, pro-EU Save Romania Unity party. Had he won the presidency – which has oversight of foreign and defence policy – it would have thrown into doubt Romania’s continued support for Ukraine in its war against Russia and marked a significant shift in the country’s geopolitical trajectory.

It’s better that Georgescu is not president, said Zamfir, but the nature of his victory and its subsequent annulment raise serious questions about Romanian democracy and risk exacerbating societal divisions. His fears are shared by others.

Appearance of action

Calin Georgescu outside the Secondary School No. 1 polling station in Mogosoaia, near Bucharest on December 8. Photo: EPA-EFE/ROBERT GHEMENT

Seemingly stung by public criticism about a lack of response to the alleged electoral manipulation, prosecutors on Saturday raided several properties in the central city of Brasov, including the home of a man they alleged had illegally bankrolled Georgescu’s campaign – Bogdan Peschir.

“The searches are related to the possible involvement of a person in the illegal financing of the electoral campaign of a candidate for the presidency of Romania, through the use of sums of money for which there are indications they may be derived from the commission of crimes and subsequently introduced in a process of money laundering,” the General Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.

According to declassified intelligence files released last week, Peschir provided roughly a million euros for Georgescu’s campaign, of which TikTok said it received 381,000 euros in the month prior to first round of the election.

Late on Sunday, police detained Horatiu Potra, a dual Romanian–French national, on suspicion of travelling – armed – to Bucharest to incite rallies in support of Georgescu. Media reports described Potra as leading a criminal, paramilitary organisation with ties to the far-right.

Prosecutors are also investigating several people who recently participated in commemorative events for an interwar fascist leader, in alleged violation of a law banning organisations and symbols of a fascist, racist or xenophobic nature. One person was detained.

The defence ministry also moved to quash claims on TikTok that Romania was moving military hardware and enlisting young people to fight in Ukraine.

But Sorin Ionita, director of the Bucharest-based think tank Expert Forum, said such actions could hardly make up for the authorities’ prior complacency.

“It is clear that the authorities are now attempting to justify the inaction of politicians and high-ranking security officials regarding the current situation,” Ionita told BIRN. “Their actions are based on the idea that Romania has faced an unprecedented hybrid attack”, he said, but such attacks have already been seen elsewhere, notably in neighbouring Moldova.

“What is truly unprecedented is the weakness of the institutions in responding to such attacks.”

‘A divided nation’

A supporter of Calin Georgescu near Bucharest on December 8. Photo: EPA-EFE/ROBERT GHEMENT

Manipulation aside, experts say the first round of the election underscored widespread public dissatisfaction with the political elite, which is perceived as corrupt and aloof.

Re-running the election won’t fix the underlying challenges.

It will take roughly 90 days to organise fresh elections, meaning Romania faces months of political uncertainty and the unprecedented prospect of incumbent President Klaus Iohannis having to stay on beyond the official end of his current term on December 21.

The timeline for the elections will be determined by the next government, which must emerge from a highly fragmented parliament elected just last days. Right-wing parties control around a third of the seats in the chamber.

“Simply cancelling the election won’t address the root cause, which cannot be overlooked: voter protest, along with the widespread disengagement and apathy among a significant portion of citizens,” said Ioan Stanomir, professor of constitutional law at Bucharest University.

“The truth is that Romania is now a divided nation, weakened by mediocrity and entrenched clientelism.”

‘Click Here’: Investigators Struggle to Shed Light on Balkan-Wide Phishing Scam

BIRN identified a number of cases in which, like Djokic, the victims really were expecting packages, making it more likely they would fall for the fraud.

Many cases probably not reported

Serbia’s electronic communications and postal regulator, CERT, says phishing is one of the top five forms of cyber-attack, with cases rising rapidly from some 17,000 in 2021 to more than 63,000 in 2023.

Phishing messages purportedly from delivery services are also on the rise. CERT said 306 such cases had been reported in 2023. “These are incidents related to the alleged impossibility of delivering packages due to the incomplete address data of citizens,” the regulator told BIRN.


A message claiming a package delivery could not be fulfilled due to incomplete address information:
“(JP Pošta Srbije [Post of Serbia]) Your package has arrived at the warehouse and cannot be delivered due to incomplete address information. Please confirm your address on the following link. https://807926162.postars.site/87dZtK/ (Copy the link and open it in Safari browser to get the latest logistics status)”

CERT has been warning about such scams since 2021, but authorities only began investigating in late 2023.

Digital rights expert Nevena Ruzic said public institutions were often too slow in telling the public they had come under cyber-attack. When state-owned power utility Elektroprivreda Srbije, EPS, and the cadastral authority suffered data leaks, the public only found out from media reports. Ruzic said public bodies often prefer to say nothing unless forced to respond.

“They [EPS and the cadastral authority] didn’t go public until there was a lot of fanfare,” she told BIRN, “as if it was a mantra to stay quiet”.

In response to the delivery service phishing, Post of Serbia suspended standard delivery notification via SMS and produced an app that it says will improve communication with customers. 

In an anonymous BIRN survey conducted in June in Serbia, Bosnia and North Macedonia, most of the almost 70 respondents reported receiving phishing messages on multiple occasions. 

According to media reports, such scams have cost their victims significant sums, in one case roughly 2,000 euros. 

The High Tech Crime Prosecution Office in Serbia has received hundreds of criminal reports concerning fraudulent messages; the real number of victims, however, is likely far higher due to underreporting.

Two cases are currently under investigation, one in 2023 involving messages claiming to be from the Serbian post office and another, this year, purportedly on behalf of the package delivery giant DHL. 

“In the case of DHL, one person was uncovered and is connected to several persons from abroad, so the procedure for providing international legal assistance is currently being worked on,” said Boris Majlat, a Serbian high-tech crime prosecutor. He specified, however, that the individual is not yet officially a suspect.  

“In the case of Post of Serbia, the Service for Combating High-Tech Crime’s report has not been submitted to date,” he added.

DHL did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did the state postal services of Serbia, North Macedonia and Bosnia.


Press release from Post of North Macedonia in February 2024 announcing that its company name had been misused: “Citizens currently are receiving messages that contain false contents informing them about deliveries that have arrived and inviting them to confirm their address via a link that is offered,” it said. Screenshot: www.posta.com.mk

No regional response

In North Macedonia, the National Centre for Response to Computer Incidents, MKD-CIRT, has received over 100 reports of SMS scams so far this year and blocked a number of related websites.

The public prosecution in North Macedonia said it does not keep any separate records on delivery-related SMS scams, saying they fall under the broader fraud category. It directed BIRN to the interior ministry for questions regarding the number of cases under investigation or resulting in charges. The ministry did not respond.

Police and prosecutors in Bosnia also did not reply. 

Authorities and postal services across the region have warned the public not to reply to text messages asking for personal data or bank details.

Despite the apparent regional nature of the scams, the public prosecution in Serbia said it was not collaborating with prosecutors in any other affected country.

“It is possible to establish cooperation only if there are facts that indicate that the perpetrators are the same [even if they are unknown],” said Majlat. “It is possible to carry out such a check through Interpol, but so far no country from the region has approached us with such a request.”

“It is not possible to assert with any certainty that it is one or more related persons who in this way commit a criminal offence to the detriment of citizens’ property, or if they are completely different perpetrators,” he told BIRN.

Asked if there was any suspicion that it might be a case of international fraud, Majlat said not yet, “because no one has been identified”.

He also said it was likely that many victims do not file complaints. Djokic didn’t, despite her bank saying she should.

“They advised us to report it to the police, but since we weren’t affected we didn’t,” she said. 


As a response to targeted phishing attempts, Post of Serbia suspended SMS notifications and launched an app. “The Post of Serbia mobile app represents a major step forward in enhancing services… In addition to existing features such as scheduling couriers, tracking shipments and price calculators, users will be able to avoid the scams, fraudulent texts and Viber messages they have been exposed to in recent times,” Post of Serbia said in a statement. Screenshot: play.google.com

Victims targeted, or picked at random?

Unlike Djokic, Jasna, who asked to be identified only by her first name, did go to the authorities.

It started in December last year she tried to help a colleague from the United States who was unable to open a message about a package and forwarded it to Jasna, who clinked on the link.

After entering the recipient’s details, Jasna was prompted to pay a storage fee of 32.93 dinars, roughly 25 euro cents. “I entered my card details and shortly after I received notification that about 67,000 dinars [around 570 euros] had been taken from my account,” she told BIRN.

Jasna immediately contacted her bank and blocked her card. She reported the case to the Serbian postal service, which directed her to CERT and the High-Tech Crime Prosecutor’s Office. 

Seven months later, in July, Jasna said she had not received any update on the progress of her complaint or the necessary documentation she requested from the prosecution for her insurance claim.

In Djokic’s case, the parcel she was expecting from Japan arrived the day after the fraudsters struck.

This, she said, “led us to the conclusion that the people who send those messages may have insight into the data of the Serbian post office and that they are targeting people who are expecting shipments”.

But Ruzic, the digital rights expert, said victims were more likely found at random.

“I would say that there is a machine behind it, some generated numbers, because these mass frauds are not about attacking individuals; they do not target personally, but anyone,” she told BIRN, noting that the phone numbers used are listed in public registries.

“Our phone numbers are available in the registry; according to the laws on electronic communications, every fixed and mobile phone operator is obliged to have a subscriber registry and a person can be omitted on request.”

Majlat, the prosecutor, also dismissed the idea of data having been leaked from the postal service or other delivery services, saying most of the victims were not expected parcels.

He said it was impossible to say precisely how many people have fallen victim to such scams given those who were defrauded of a few hundred dinars may not have bothering reporting it.

Azem Kurtic in Sarajevo and Sinisa Jakov Marusic in Skopje contributed reporting to this story.

Kosovo Citizen Faces Extradition to US for ‘Running Online Criminal Market’


Photo illustration: Pixels/Anete Lusina

The US Attorney’s Office in Tampa, Florida said on Thursday that Liridon Masurica, a 33-year-old from Gjilan/Gnilanje in Kosovo, has been arrested and awaits extradition to the US on suspicion of running an online criminal marketplace used to commit fraud.

It said a grand jury in Florida had charged Masurica “with one count of conspiracy to commit access device fraud and five substantive counts of fraudulent use of 15 or more unauthorised access devices. If convicted on all counts, Masurica faces a maximum penalty of 55 years in federal prison”.

The indictment alleges that Masurica is the “lead administrator of BlackDB.cc – an online criminal marketplace in operation from 2018 until present”, which sold “compromised account and server credentials, credit card information, and other personally identifiable information of individuals primarily located in the United States, including those located within the Middle District of Florida”.

The items sold on BlackDB.cc were used by cybercriminals for activities such as “tax fraud, credit card fraud, and identity theft,” according to the US Attorney’s Office.

Investigations were led in the US by the FBI and Internal Revenue Service together with the Kosovo Police’s cybercrime department and with the assistance of an FBI office in Sofia, Bulgaria.

On Thursday, the Kosovo prosecution and police announced that raids carried out in Pristina and Gjilan/Gnilanje over BlackDB and another case, known as RYDOX, had resulted in three arrests.

According to Kosovo authorities, RYDOX sold smuggled products and illegal services including “personal data of the victims (American citizens) such as: names, addresses, social security numbers, drivers’ licenses, email addresses and passwords, and data of bank account for online access”.

The online criminal marketplace used a server in Malaysia. According to the Kosovo authorities, in collaboration with Malaysian authorities, the server has been taken down.

Olympics Marred by Online Hate Speech Targeting LGBTQ+ People

In a Facebook post, Kosovo sports journalist Jon Ajeti called the unbalanced fight between Khelif and Italian boxer Angela Carini, who quit in tears after only 46 seconds after being punched by Khelif, one of the “most embarrassing moments in the history of the Olympics”. Ajeti also incorrectly labelled Khelif as trans. His post received significant support from commenters, however.

Adevarul, a popular online media outlet in Romania, also propagated misinformation about Khelif, incorrectly stating that she is biologically male. “The woman with the Y chromosome is unstoppable in Paris,” declared Adevarul’s headline.

The controversy extended beyond Khelif, touching on broader issues of gender, religion and LGBTQ+ representation in the Olympics. Zagreb Pride’s Facebook page came under fire from angry commenters after it posted about the International Olympic Committee’s warning of a “witch hunt” at the expense of intersex and gender-variant competitors.

The International Olympic Committee hit back at what it said was the “misleading information” about the two female boxers, stating that both “have been competing in international boxing competitions for many years in the women’s category, including the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, International Boxing Association (IBA) World Championships and IBA-sanctioned tournaments”. It said they were then disqualified by the IBA “without any due process”.

The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure – especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top-level competition for many years,” the IOC added.

Some social media users also hit back against the critics of the two boxers by sharing a picture of Khelif as a little girl. Some online media, such as Zoomer in Serbia, went further by providing more level-headed analyses that included the opinions of professionals who argued that hormonal variations such as the ones affecting Khelif could be more widespread than people imagine.

Nemanja Marinovic, editor of Zoomer, pointed out that people posting on social media “are not bound by any ethics or journalistic standards and can literally write whatever they want”. This means that the spreading of misinformation about issues is inevitable, he argued.

“This will continue until a way is found to regulate and verify the truthfulness of the information disseminated on social media and to sanction those who use it to spread disinformation and hate speech,” he said. “However, the fact that one of the most problematic Twitter users is its owner [Elon Musk] does not fill me with much optimism.”

He also pointed out that although well-known boxers and other sports figures who posted their opinions about the Khelif controversy on social media may have many followers, they aren’t necessarily experts to be trusted.

“Just because someone is good at boxing doesn’t mean they understand gender issues or the history of medieval Serbia, nor does tennis talent automatically make someone a nutritionist or virologist,” Marinovic told BIRN.

“Just because someone is good at boxing doesn’t mean they understand gender issues or the history of medieval Serbia, nor does tennis talent automatically make someone a nutritionist or virologist,” Marinovic told BIRN.

A BIRN analysis has indicated that the campaign against Khelif was driven by pro-Russian accounts previously identified as sources of disinformation, which spread false narratives about Khelif’s gender following her initial victory over her Italian opponent.

These narratives, rooted in claims from the International Boxing Association and its leader, Umar Kremlev, an ally of Vladimir Putin, suggested Khelif had an unfair advantage due to what they falsely claimed was her transgender status.

Pro-Russian accounts on X increased the presence of the topic on the Elon Musk-owned social network, the Associated Press reported, so that, according to PeakMetrics’ analysis, the boxer’s name appeared tens of thousands of times within just 60 minutes.

In the end, Khelif won a gold medal at the Games. On Saturday, she also filed a formal legal complaint to the Paris prosecutor’s office for combating online hate speech, alleging “aggravated cyber-harassment”, according to her lawyer Nabil Boudi.

Gold medal winner Imane Khelif of Algeria at the Paris Olympic Games on August 9. Photo: EPA-EFE/MAST IRHAM

Khelif was not the only athlete at the centre of gender-related ‘culture wars’ controversies around the Games. Klix website in Bosnia published an article questioning the identity of American shot putter Raven Saunders, who uses the pronouns ‘they’ and ‘them’. Saunders competed at the Olympic Games in the women’s category, but according to Klix, she does not want to be referred to as a woman. The title of the article declared: “There is no end in sight to the oddities related to the Olympic Games in Paris.”

Meanwhile manipulated photographs of US swimmer Lia Thomas were widely shared by Turkish news outlets on X (formerly Twitter), falsely claiming that she was disqualified from the women’s swimming competition at the Paris Olympics for an unspecified reason. In reality, Thomas, a transsexual swimmer, did not compete at the 2024 Games.

Marinovic argued that these controversies highlight a lack of knowledge and expertise among journalists as well as social media users.

“With the example of the boxer from Algeria, both in our country [Serbia] and in the world, we see that the professional media also need training in fact-checking, because the lies they published could be checked with two clicks,” he said.

“The factual situation is that narrowly specialised newsrooms, such as sports ones, are not sensitised to many other social issues and do not often appear as a topic for them – but even then, the standards of the profession dictate that you invite experts to comment and get informed, and not write whatever comes to your mind first.”

Marinovic also argued that news website are financially capitalising on hate speech and ‘culture wars’ disputes by reporting controversial comments in order to boost their online readership numbers.

“The problem is that the media are also aware that political tensions, as well as minority issues, are hot topics that polarise the public and bring shares and clicks – so they use these incidents as a justification to transfer hate speech from the stands to the front pages, justifying it by ‘quoting’ what was chanted in the [stadium] stands, or by ‘transmitting the reactions’ of various experts and non-experts, full of hate speech, without any censorship,” he said.

“Fake news and hate speech are profitable because even when they lead to legal punishment, which is rare, it is so small compared to the profit that the economic calculation is very clear.”

Kristina Ljevak Bajramovic, a journalist writing for non-profit Bosnian media with a focus on women and LGBTQ+ rights, pointed out that major events also provide a bigger platform for people with negative agendas.

“When something attracts additional attention, such as the Olympics, then those who want to spread harmful narratives know that they will have a larger audience and that their ‘effort’ will be more visible,” Ljevak Bajramovic told BIRN.

Opening ceremony – art or blasphemy?

The Olympics opening ceremony, masterminded by artistic director Thomas Jolly as a colourful tableau of performances along the River Seine, provided the first major online controversy at the Paris Games. The ceremony praised by some social media users as a daring and colourful spectacle, but criticised by others as a blasphemous insult to Christians.

The moment that attracted the most negative reactions was a scene that seemed to evoke Leonardo da Vinci’s painting ‘The Last Supper’, including a transgender model and drag queens. Jolly explained that the scene was actually intended to represent the mythical Greek ‘Feast of Dionysus’, but this did not quell devout Christians’ anger. The row sparked a major outburst of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric online.

An article by Serbian Orthodox Church representative Darko Ristov Djogo, published by online media outlet IN4S, called the opening ceremony “satanic” and “scandalous”. Djogo accused the event of mocking Christian symbols and argued that it could actually harm the LGBTQ+ population by playing with religion. 

In another article on the IN4S site, the author labelled the ceremony  as a “gay pride” event, describing it as “boring” and “banal”, and also saying it could contribute to the stigmatisation of LGBTQ+ people. The article provoked a series of comments from readers using offensive language about gay people while also criticising events like the Eurovision Song Contest for supposedly promoting “satanism”.

The website of Serbian tabloid Kurir also raised the question of whether French singer Philippe Katerine, who played the Greek god Dionysus in the feast scene, was mocking and belittling religion, citing similar “satanism” allegations that were posted on social media.

Another Serbian tabloid, Informer, echoed this rhetoric in an online article.Satanism is no longer hidden; under the guise of democracy, even children are being exploited. Eurovision has shown a disastrous face, and the Olympic Games have taken it three steps further. Da Vinci’s painting, ‘The Last Supper’, has been mocked in the most brutal way,” Informer raged.


Raven Saunders of the US competes in the Women’s Shot Put final at the Stade de France stadium on August 9. Photo: EPA-EFE/CHRISTIAN BRUNA

Meanwhile on Facebook, the Croatian Catholic media outlet God is Here published incorrect information that Christians had staged a gathering in the centre of Paris to respond to the organisers of the Olympic Games by “praising God”.

The article published by God is Here, entitled “VIDEO: Thousands of Christians in the centre of Paris praise Jesus with a song at the top of their voices”, included a video that was widely shared on social networks. 

However, the photo from the article was taken in January 2024, when thousands of French citizens were protesting against a rigorous immigration law, while the video was made on May 25, more than two months before the start of the Olympics, during a gathering of Christians at an event called the ‘March for Jesus’.

Albanian online media outlet JOQ posted photos from the opening event of the Games with a title stating: “The French apologise for the controversial opening ceremony.” The story was based on the Paris authorities’ apology for any offence caused to Christians by the unintentional ‘Last Supper’ parody. But the JOQ article in turn sparked dozens of hate speech comments and insults directed at French people.

Controversial influencer Andrew Tate, who has been charged with rape and human trafficking in Romania, also waded into the ceremony row. On July 27, Tate announced on X that he would protest in front of Bucharest’s French Embassy against what he said was the mocking of Jesus during the opening ceremony. 

The following day, he posted a video on X, shot at the protest, in which he was seen speaking to passers-by. “Guys, you are Christians. You can’t allow them to desecrate something as important as ‘The Last Supper’ with transsexuals and little children. Paedophilia,” Tate told protesters outside the French embassy. Tate was accompanied by his brother Tristan and their protest attracted widespread coverage from online media.

The Romanian Orthodox Church’s spokesperson Adrian Agachi meanwhile called the Olympics opening ceremony “demonic”, writing on Facebook that the so-called ‘Last Supper’ moment was an advertisement for “woke ideology”. 

In an indication of how aggressive online rhetoric can have potentially violent consequences, opening ceremony director Thomas Jolly filed complaints to the French police after the event, saying he had received death threats as well as insults.

French President Emmanual Macron expressed anger about the online persecution of Jolly and attacks on artistic freedom. “I am outraged and sad,” Macron said. “Nothing justifies threats against an artist.”

Bosnian journalist Ljevak Bajramovic noted however that the online aggression around the Olympic Games has simply reflected what is happening in everyday life.

“Not a single social event, not even the Olympic Games themselves, despite the noble mission of their initiation, can be isolated from social reality,” she said.

Bosnia and Herzegovina was covered by Elma Selimovic, Aida Trepanic and Sara Velaga Drek, North Macedonia by Bojan Stojkovski and Goce Trpkovski, Croatia by Katarina Gulan, Kosovo by Flaka Fazlija, Turkey by Hamdi Firat Buyuk, Serbia by Tijana Uzelac and Kalina Simic, Montenegro by Djurdja Radulovic, Romania by Adina Florea, Albania by Nensi Bogdani, Hungary by Akos Keller-Alant.

Using AI in Albanian Public Procurements ‘No Easy Solution’ for Corruption

Rama’s government has been increasingly in the spotlight since the relatively new Special Structure Against Corruption and Organised Crime, SPAK started a series of investigations that brought charges on abuse of power and corruption against several dozen officials, mayors, ministers and a deputy-prime minister who is currently on the run from justice.

SPAK’s efforts are part of wider efforts to tackle high-level graft, backed by Albania’s Western partners.

Rama claims that he bears no structural responsibility for these cases, insisting they were just incidents of individual wrongdoing. As to tackling corruption in public procurement processes using AI, he has not explained specifically how this might work.

Experts are also unsure.

“It is difficult to evaluate with the data at hand the capacities of the government to implement AI in public procurement, and it is not clear what elements of the public procurement process it will cover,” said Orkidea Xhaferaj, digital and innovation policy expert at the Centre Science and Innovation for Development in Tirana.

“Although the government of Albania is working with Microsoft to implement AI for public procurement, there are concerns when it comes to technology, legal and regulatory measures, as well as operational ones. Predominantly, data management and quality remain an issue in the country, especially at local level,” Xhaferaj added.

She pointed out that recruiting well-educated staff to implement such innovations remains a challenge in Albania, not only for public institutions, but also for the private sector.

But she argued that using AI in public administration has a series of benefits – “automation of processes which reduce manual work, data analytics capabilities, real time analysis of bids, contracts and notices, to address risks of fraud and errors”.

However, there are practical issues too: “The use of AI in public procurement brings about concerns in regard to cybersecurity and data privacy, and data biases raise concerns as well,” she pointed out.

She recommended that the authorities begin with smaller-scale or pilot projects before committing to involve AI in larger processes.


Infographic: BIRN.

‘The machine is deciding’

Political observers expressed cynicism about Rama’s idea of using AI to fight corruption – seeing it as a potential tool for blame-dodging.

“He is apparently aiming to tell citizens and businesses who are complaining about public procurement services that ‘the machine’ is deciding and consequently, his administration bears no responsibility and the system that he created is causing no issues,” commented Zef Preci, executive director of the Albanian Centre for Economic Research.

Afrim Krasniqi, director of Albanian Institute of Political Studies also believes that the Prime Minister is trying to avoid accountability. “This will create a new alibi for corrupt officials,” Krasniqi told BIRN.

This isn’t the first time that Rama has promised high-tech solutions for Albania’s institutional problems.

Rama has previously said earlier that he believes that AI will help Albania to speed up its EU integration process by machine-translating EU laws and regulations. However, these plans failed when a public procurement call resulted in no offers.

The digitalisation of the Public Procurement Commission’s documents has got under way, however; the National Agency for Information Society, which is supervised by Rama’s office, last year awarded a 17 million leks (173,000 euros) contract to a private company to begin the process.

Opposition Democratic Party MP Jorida Tabaku at a parliamentary session. Photo: LSA

Corruption deeply rooted

Albania’s Special Prosecution Against Corruption and Organised Crime, SPAK observed in its annual report that its investigations have shown how corruption has been identified from the inception of some public procurement processes and not as part of the process.

“The corrupt activity might start from the very initial stage, from the decision to allocate funds for a specific project, followed by incorrect actions and decisions from the contracting authority,” SPAK noted.

The report revealed that investigations have shown direct involvement of high-ranking public officials in irregularities that start before a call for proposals is even issued for a specific public procurement process.

“We have seen direct interventions by high level officials who negotiate with a private party before a procurement or a public private partnership process has been started,” the report said.

Experts believe that digitalisation and the use of AI will make little difference to this.

“One of the main faults [of the government] has been the preparation of the laws or decisions to serve specific oligarchs or political clients; many of these things that are presented as large-scale development projects have been granted to companies that have been created exactly for the purpose of winning such contracts,” Krasniqi said.

Rigels Xhemollari, executive director of Qendresa Qytetare (Civic Resistance), a pressure group, says that technological innovation will not help if the people operating the new tools are the same as those who have been manipulate public procurement processes on paper.

“The problem here is not the process, but the need to fight corruption in the public procurement processes,” Xhemollari said.

Jorida Tabaku, an MP from the opposition Democratic Party, said that that the government has already a high-tech tool to identify potential graft issues – the Open Data Albania online platform.

Open Data Albania evaluates procurement processes according to anti-corruption criteria and flag those with suspected anomalies. Some 40 per cent of all procurement processes have been flagged on the platform.

“SPAK has arrested several high-level officials, including MPs and ministers while a deputy prime minister is currently on the run. The question is whether the government has stopped to think over what has caused this widespread corruption among its ranks,” Tabaku declared.

Krasniqi said that the lack of will to analyse corruption in the current procurement system means that using AI may make no difference in practice.

“The new system provides no guarantees that it will be more successful than the traditional method of tackling corruption in public procurement,” he said.

North Macedonia’s New Govt Accused of Backsliding on Access to Information

Journalists were granted free access to the Central Registry under a 2017 decision by the then Social Democrat-led government. 

Even then there were problems: journalists were not given a password for online access but had to submit a request and were then invited to the Central Registry itself to search for the relevant information on one of its computers.

Under new leadership since the conservative VMRO-DPMNE party took power in June, the Central Registry decided in October that the 2017 government decision does not supersede the law that limits free access to institutions on the state budget or local self-government units. Journalists would be charged.


Searching for info from the government may take weeks. Photo: Government of North Macedonia

North Macedonia’s Central Registry access stands out as particularly restrictive, compared, for example, to neighbouring Serbia and Bulgaria where such information is open to anyone with an internet connection. 

“The central registry is essentially a database. It is not a private company that manages private data,” said Aleksandar Dimitrievski, a journalist with North Macedonia’s investigative TV magazine 360 Degrees.

“It’s simple – if someone needs an official document with a signature and stamp or sets of specific data, they will still pay for the service. But for everyone else, I don’t see why a portal can’t be created where non-official basic data will be free.”

The Central Registry said amendments were in the pipeline that would restore free access for media.

Dragan Sekulovski, executive director of the Association of Journalists of Macedonia, AJM, said the association expects the matter “to be settled as soon as possible and we hope that it will not be prolonged”.

Freedom o information requests stymied


The Central Registry said amendments were in the pipeline that would restore free access for media. Photo: BIRN

Besides the Central Registry, there are worries too over the effectiveness of Freedom of Information requests under the new authorities.

Since July 29, for example, BIRN has been seeking the names and salaries of advisers to North Macedonia’s prime minister, Hristijan Mickoski. Such information used to be public, published on the website of the government. Now it is not. 

In late August, after failing to get answers directly from the government, BIRN filed an FOI request; days later, a response arrived saying the request had been approved but a 20-day deadline for the information to actually arrive expired.

BIRN repeated the FOI in September, this time specifically asking for the contracts of the appointed advisers, only to receive a response from Mickoski’s cabinet saying that the prime minister’s team of advisers was still being formed and the entire list would be published once it is complete.

The Centre for Civil Communications, an NGO that frequently uses FOI requests, said it too had run into resistance of late, with the most common excuse being that the information it seeks is classified.

“The problem is that no one has control over what information an institution can declare classified and for what reason,” said German Filkov, head of the Centre. “So it turns out that as soon as it receives a request for access, it can immediately classify it and thereby hide it from the public.”

‘Going backwards’


Infographic: BIRN

North Macedonia has made some progress when it comes to free access to open databases online, according to the recent BIRN report Open Data and Digitalisation in the Western Balkans: The State of Play.

For example, datasets on all budget transactions paid for by the Treasury are available and updated twice a month and can be downloaded in an open format. The government portal on public procurements also offers data on awarded contracts in an open format. 

The report found, however, that only 74 of more than 1,300 public institutions in the country provide data sets online, and not all of these can be found in the country’s central open data portal, data.gov.mk.

The government’s own website offers data on government sessions and decisions, finances, regulations and service data, but the data is not always published on time or regularly updated. 

The law on free access to public information, in force since 2006, requires every public institution to have a designated employee responsible for handling requests for information of a public nature.

According to Filkov, the public servants given this task did not change over the past year; what did change were the heads of the institutions.

“I can conclude that it is precisely the people in charge who are behind every negative change in the practice of disclosing information,” he said.

Such changes, he said, “only serve to remind us that the fight for free access to public information is, unfortunately, daily, long and arduous, and instead of moving forward in publishing the unpublished, we go backwards”.

Digital Rights Review: Websites Promote and Profit from Abuse of Women

The images were found in two folders. In one called ‘Hunt Her Down’, comments explicitly describe the cruelty that would be inflicted on the women in the images. In the other called ‘Girl Meat Market’, there were pictures of women as well as personal data. These pictures also included the price of a ‘bid’, the suggestion being that the uploader would abuse the women in one way or another for the right amount of money. Several girls in the photos appear to be under age.

The issue was first picked up by influencers who saw the posts on Reddit, and then by mainstream media. The outcome of the public outcry was that the majority of the illegal photos were removed from the site. Several victims reported the case to the police, who began an investigation.

Surveillance and stalking


Photo illustration: Franco Alva/Unsplash.

BIRN’s digital rights monitors also registered cases of online abuse and surveillance of women in other countries in central south-east Europe. In Albania, a 33-year-old man was arrested after allegedly opening several fake accounts on Facebook and Instagram, which he is accused of using to stalk a 24-year-old girl from the port city of Durres.

After the girl reported the case, police identified and arrested the suspect, and seized a gun and bullets from his home.

August also marked the re-arrest of controversial online personality Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate. The brothers were detained for the alleged online sexual exploitation of 34 women, including a 15-year-old girl.

Prosecutors accuse the brothers of recruiting their victims through social media and forcing them to produce pornographic materials to be sold online. They allegedly obtained 2.5 million euros from the sexual exploitation of the 34 identified victims. The brothers deny all the accusations, with Andrew Tate claiming on X that he has been the victim of conspiracies.

In an unconnected case in Romania in September, 30-year-old Nicolae Mitrea was arrested in Constanta, a city on the Black Sea coast, for allegedly killing two women in June and August. The women were both sex workers who the suspect allegedly recruited from an escort website.

Following the murders, the suspect allegedly stole the victims’ jewellery, money, and their cars, and is said to have disposed of one of the victim’s body in a field in Constanta County. Mitrea’s wife and her 15-year-old son are also suspects and both have been arrested. Prosecutors accuse them of knowing of the crimes allegedly committed by Mitrea.

In an unrelated case, prosecutors from the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism, DIICOT indicted a 17-year-old boy for alleged rape and online child sex abuse in Iasi, a county in the country’s north-east. According to prosecutors, the teenager is accused of raping an 11-year-old relative in July. He is said to have filmed the alleged abuse with his mobile phone and later shared the material on social media.

In August, prosecutors from DIICOT detained a man in an online child sex abuse and blackmail probe in Lasi, a county in north-easte Romania. According to prosecutors, the suspect allegedly recruited an eight-year-old girl on social media in July.  He is accused of persuading her to produce online child sex abuse material and send it to him via Facebook Messenger. Subsequently, the suspect allegedly blackmailed the girl to produce even more online child sex abuse material by threatening to inform her parents.

Edona James, a well-known trans woman, was also threatened online in Kosovo. A death threat posted on her Instagram account urged people to kill her, claiming that she has not accepted herself the way God created her. She has reported the death threat to the police. According to the UCLA Williams Institute, transgender people are more likely to be victims of violence than CIS-gendered people.

Video violations


Photo illustration: Roxy/Unsplash.

BIRN’s monitoring registered other types of violations against women in late August and throughout September, ranging from discriminatory remarks to abuse of personal information.

In Romania, prosecutors from DIICOT detained a man accused of threatening and harassing his wife during divorce procedures, as well as having unauthorised access to her data.

According to prosecutors, the suspect allegedly broke into his wife’s email account and systematically changed all her login data for multiple platforms, which the woman was using to manage her company.

Albania’s health and social welfare minister was criticised after publishing a video of a victim of gender-based violence on her official Facebook page. The victim, whose husband allegedly set fire to her, is shown in pain in hospital. The video compromised the privacy of the victim and was distressing for viewers; after media reported on the case, the woman’s face was blurred.

Meanwhile in Montenegro, the Podgorica city administration released a promotional video about the cleanliness of urban areas, depicting a woman in a misogynistic, stereotypical manner. In the video, she is seen being ogled by a man, objectifying her movements and body shape, as well as portrayed as incapable of throwing trash into the bin, requiring a man to help her.

After public criticism, the authorities removed the video, but they defended their conduct, claiming they have the right to artistic freedom and asserting that the criticism was politically motivated pre-election slander by the opposition.

When the media reported on female politicians’ responses, it generated even more sexist rhetoric, such as the misogynistic comments posted by readers under an online article in Vijesti about members of the Women’s Club of the City Assembly criticising the authorities’ rationale for creating the video.

Monitoring: Hungary was covered by Akos Keller-Alant, Romania by Adina Florea, Albania by Nensi Bogdani, Montenegro by Djurdja Radulovic, Kosovo by Flaka Fazlija, Serbia by Tijana Uzelac, North Macedonia by Bojan Stojkovski and Goce Trpkovski, Bosnia and Herzegovina by Elma Selimovic and Aida Trepanic, Turkey by Hamdi Firat Buyuk, Croatia by Katarina Gulan.

Greece Spyware Victims Refuse to Give Up After Intelligence Agency ‘Exonerated’

“We hoped that the Greek judiciary would possibly do its job,” Triantafillou said. “However, the prosecutorial investigation carried out by the Supreme Court did not include important journalistic findings.”

But while the government of conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis wants to a draw a line under the scandal, those targeted by the Predator spyware say they have identified serious flaws in the investigation and are considering appealing the case at the level of the European Union.

“There is a debate about whether the investigation was sufficient, substantial and accurate as required by the EU human rights treaty, the European Court of Human Rights,” said Zacharias Kesses, a lawyer representing seven Predator victims, including the first identified target, journalist Thanasis Koukakis.

“There is no fair trial when there is no adequate investigation of a crime.”

Misdemeanour charges

PASOK-KINAL party leader Nikos Androulakis speaks at a pre-election gathering in Athens, June 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE/Alexander Beltes

What came to be known as ‘Predator-gate’ began in March 2022, when Koukakis found that his phone had been infected with Predator, a spyware developed by a company called Cytrox, based in North Macedonia. The software was on his phone for roughly three months in 2021.

Inside Story and two other media outlets ran with the story, revealing a link between the government’s general secretary and nephew of the Greek premier, Grigoris Dimitriadis, and Intellexa, a company that sold Predator spyware in Greece.

But it was only in July 2022, when reports revealed an attempt to plant Predator on the phone of Nikos Androulakis, leader of the opposition PASOK party, the third biggest party in parliament, that the story really gained traction. It also emerged he had separately been placed under monitoring by the EYP, which the government said was legal but wrong.

After the revelations, Dimitriadis and EYP director Panagiotis Kontoleon both resigned. The same day, Dimitriadis sued two media outlets that had published the reports as well as Koukakis.

By that point, the Athens prosecutor’s office was investigating, but in October last year, Supreme Court prosecutor Georgia Adeilini asked that the case be forwarded to her deputy, Achilleas Zisis, saying it was of “major importance” and that the statute of limitations risked expiring.

On July 30, Zisis reported back in a 287-page report: the EYP was cleared but four individuals linked to the private companies involved in the spyware will be prosecuted. Under legal changes in 2019, the charges will be prosecuted as misdemeanours. No state body was implicated.

The opposition called the findings a farce, while Koukakis told BIRN: “There cannot be such conclusions in a case where all the evidence is clear.”

Dimitris Ververesos, president of the Athens Bar Association and the Plenary of Greek Bar Associations, wrote in an op-ed in the To Vima newspaper in August that “the rule of law is being peeled away”.

Possible appeal to European court

Greek journalists Stavros Malichudis (second from left), Eliza Triantafillou (third from left), and Thanasis Koukakis (right) attend a European Parliament inquiry hearing amid an investigation into Pegasus surveillance spyware, Brussels, September 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/OLIVIER HOSLET

As a plaintiff, Koukakis was allowed to see the case file. He and his lawyer, Kesses, said the investigation was flawed.

Koukakis said that Zisis had characterised as a coincidence the fact that 27 people being monitoring by EYP were simultaneously targeted by Predator spyware, given that this represented only some 24 per cent of all identified Predator victims. He also said that none of the victims were asked to testify. “Their mobiles were never examined, so he cannot know if they were infected,” Koukakis said.

The Greek Data Protection Authority detected at least 225 cases of attempted spyware installation on numbers registered to 87 private individuals or company employees.

According to reporting by Inside Story, Intellexa, the company that brought the Predator software to Greece, was involved in editing the text of an intergovernmental agreement on cyber security between EYP and its Macedonian counterpart.

“However,” said Koukakis, “the Greek Supreme Court says the [Intellexa] executive may have provided his services to the EYP in the role of an individual”.

Such are the shortcomings, said Kesses, “there is the possibility of appealing to EU institutions, to the EU [European] court [of human rights], for not effectively and adequately investigating the case”.

Journalists vow to keep going

Director-General of Greece’s National Intelligence Service, Panagiotis Kontoleon, who resigned in August 2022 amid the Predator scandal. Photo: EPA-EFE/ALEXANDER BELTES

Not even EYP employees were safe from Predator.

One 17-year veteran, who spoke to BIRN on condition of anonymity, said “strange things” began happening at the agency after the conservative New Democracy party came to power in 2019.

“We were being asked to do things that were completely outside the scope of our service,” the woman said. She began making complaints and finally, with several other employees, filed a lawsuit.

Three days after she gave a statement to the prosecutor, the woman said she received an SMS on her phone that read, “My little girl, do you remember?”, and a link apparently to YouTube.

“Due to my training I would never click on that link,” the employee said.

Kesses said it was apparent that a number of targets – in government – have since risen up the ladder.

“If you look at the list of people who were under surveillance, they were all upgraded in one way or another in the last cabinet reshuffle,” he said.

The journalists, meanwhile, say they will not stop digging.

“Our work is not the work of justice, it is journalistic,” said Triantafillou. “We continue to investigate and we will continue to find things out and write about them.”

BIRD Community

Are you a professional journalist or a media worker looking for an easily searchable and comprehensive database and interested in safely (re)connecting with more than thousands of colleagues from Southeastern and Central Europe?

We created BIRD Community, a place where you can have it all!

Join Now