Five years after the “non grata,” Berisha beat the U.S.. Now he wants to buy the certificate

Today, May 19, marks five years since the United States sanctioned Sali Berisha, describing him as a leader who had undermined democracy, engaged in major corruption together with his family while in power, and used pressure against the justice system.

The United States generally has three types of sanctions: State Department designations under Section 7031(c), Treasury Department sanctions, and presidential executive orders — what people in the Balkans usually mean when they speak of sanctions imposed directly by the U.S. president.

State Department sanctions are different from Treasury sanctions. They are public, political in nature, cannot be challenged in court, and are extremely hard to reverse. Removing them requires a strong political, geopolitical or national-interest reason for Washington to quietly freeze or lift the designation.

Presidential executive orders, meanwhile, usually target people seen as threats to regional peace, stability, or U.S. interests.

Put simply, Berisha was not sanctioned for one single act. He was sanctioned for the whole story of his political life: a life that, in Washington’s view, undermined democracy, involved major corruption by him and his family, and included pressure on the justice system.

So far, there is no known case of a State Department designation of this kind being cancelled for anyone sanctioned under it. There have been cases where sanctions imposed by executive order or by the Treasury Department — usually over financial abuse or links to organised crime — have been softened under conditions.

One example was Milorad Dodik in Bosnia, whose Treasury sanctions were reportedly eased after talks about his withdrawal from politics and a possible leadership change among Bosnian Serbs.

Berisha’s case is unusual.

For most politicians, sanctions are meant to push them out of politics and into retirement. With Berisha, they had the opposite effect. They helped bring him formally back into active politics.

He had already been the shadow leader of the Democratic Party. After the sanctions, he launched a battle against the party leadership, using parallel party structures to force his opponents out.

In other words, Berisha treated the sanctions as a direct challenge from the United States. He fought their main purpose, which was to remove him from politics.

And, in one sense, he succeeded.

On that point, Berisha beat the United States. He proved that inside the Democratic Party, when the choice was between Sali Berisha and the United States, the party chose Sali Berisha. That weakened the practical effect of the American sanction and gave him a real political victory.

For a while, that victory became part of his identity. Until the autumn of 2024, much of his rhetoric rested on the idea that Democratic Party members had politically rejected the American designation.

But Berisha began to lose the moral battle with the United States after Donald Trump’s victory, when he paid a Trump campaign adviser $6 million to help remove the non grata designation.

That move exposed the weakness in his victory. If he had truly defeated the sanction politically, why pay millions to have Washington certify that defeat?

More than a year after that expensive effort, Berisha remains sanctioned. And the attempt to remove the designation appears to have far more money behind it than the amount officially declared.

The reason is simple. For Berisha, the United States would have to open a door it has never opened before. Not for any American national interest in the region, but for the pride of an old man who has taken the Democratic Party hostage in Albania and is effectively telling Washington: “If you do not lift my sanctions, I will kill it.”

And day by day, he is draining the life out of it.

As a principle of foreign policy, the United States does not surrender to hostage-takers. If necessary, it eliminates them together with the hostage. So Berisha should find another way to help the people he has paid millions to remove the sanctions.

The easiest way would be to release the hostage and go home.

Even if the sanctions are never legally lifted, he could still keep the glory of having defied them politically — before he turned that defiance into a cash transaction.

The truth is that, in Albania, this is no longer much of a debate. In fact, many of those now in power secretly hope the sanctions are lifted, so that the whole mechanism becomes laughable and loses any force it might one day have against them too.

But Washington is not facing any national interest that Berisha can serve, or any regional challenge involving him that would justify a political bargain for the millions he is spending behind the scenes.

So perhaps it is better to carry on like this.

Whenever Berisha has a problem, he can spread the word that the sanctions are about to be lifted. Hope, after all, dies last.

As Berisha himself would say: he is in the last stretch.

Originally published in Albanian as: Pesë vjet pas “non grata”-s, Berisha e ka mundur SHBA, por do që t’ia blejë certifikatën