Albania’s former prime minister, Fatos Nano, the historic leader of the country’s left, died on Friday at age of 73, Prime Minister Edi Rama said on social networks.
Nano passed away in a hospital in the capital Tirana after several days in a coma caused by respiratory complications, according to doctors.
Widely regarded as a liberal reformer, Nano championed institutional modernisation and Albania’s transition to a market economy.
But he also came under strong criticism from the European Union for his government’s failure to root out corruption and organised crime and was himself convicted of embezzling foreign aid.
Born in Tirana in 1952, the son of a former director of the Albanian state-run television began his professional career in 1978 as an economic expert at the Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies, during the rule of communist dictator Enver Hoxha.
Nano was also professor of political economy at the University of Tirana.
He was prime minister from March to May 1990, in the transitional government of Albania’s last communist president Ramiz Alia.
In 1992, after the country’s first multi-party elections, Nano was elected president of the Socialist Party, the successor of Albania’s communist Party of Labour.
In 1994, he convicted of embezzling $7 million (six million euros) of Italian aid and sentenced to 12 years in jail.
Nano has consistently maintained his innocence, calling himself a political prisoner.
During the 1997 nationwide unrest sparked by the collapse of get-rich-quick pyramid schemes that ruined thousands of Albanians, Nano escaped from prison.
He was later granted amnesty by the then president Sali Berisha.
Nano became prime minister for the second time in June 1997, until October 1998 when he resigned amid renewed political turmoil.
He served his third and final term as prime minister from 2002 to 2005, after which the Socialists lost parliamentary elections.
Nano then withdrew from politics, ceding power to Berisha. He was succeeded at the helm of the Socialist Party by Edi Rama, Albania’s current prime minister.
