The Economist: Albanian mafia is not reality, it's a myth

John Macris was leaving his house on the outskirts of Athens on the Voula coast on October 31st last year when a man ran towards his car with a gun. Mr. Macris, a Greco-Russian gangster, jumped out of the car in a desperate attempt to flee the bomber, but the gunman chased him and shot him dead.

A few weeks ago in New York, Sylvester Zotola, a suspected member of the Bonanno criminal family, was traveling in his car next to a McDonald's when he was chased and killed. Thus, Raúl Tamudo, a retired footballer, returned to his home in Barcelona on August 12th and discovered that someone had broken the door and stole his collection of expensive hours for a hundred thousand euros, broadcasts BW.

Police said they had doubts that the thief belonged to the Albanian “mafia”. Greek and American counterparts also blamed Albanians for carrying out and ordering Mr. Macris and Mr. Zotola.

The three crimes were among many showing a significant increase in the criminality of Albanian gangsters. Asked to list organised crime groups from the risk they present in Europe, a senior official in the EU law enforcement agency, Europol, put Albanian mobsters ahead of the Russians as well.

British police confirmed the rise in the criminal activity of these groups in human trafficking. Groups of Albanians and Kosovars in Great Britain have also been accused of killing and torturing the streets to control cocaine trafficking.

But, says Jana Arsovska, who teaches in New York City University and has been attending the activities of Albanian criminals for 15 years -- “Endless wealth and the extreme violence of criminals coming from Albania and Kosovo does not mean that they belong to an organisation structured with customs and rituals similar to Cosa Nostra in Sicily or Yakuza in Japan. We see many organizations working independently from each other, says Mrs. Arsovska.

“They speak Albanian, but that does not mean they are linked to organisations in Albania and are never exclusively Albanian”.

Some reasons help to explain why organized crime was capable of taking strong root in Albania after the fall of communism. The 1991 break-up of the secret service known as Security left about 10,000 agents prone to criminality unemployed. The collapse of pyramid schemes 7 years later, affecting thousands of people who introduced their savings, caused unrest and the opening of the warehouses to fall into the hands of the population over 550 thousand small army and emergency calibre weapons in Albania and Kosovo, during Balkan wars given the strong link between criminals, politicians and guerrillas (with some players who have over the three roles). In the late 1990s, especially northern Albania, where clan loyalty was always important turned into a violent country without law, torn by murderous strife.

However, while individual mobsters had emigrated, there is little evidence that the gangs formed by them in the Balkans have spread to the international level of type “Cosa Nostra” or another Italian mafia known as “Nrangheta”.

Many Albanian criminals committed crimes only after they migrated to Europe.

Brutal, ruthless and visible, however, they are far less sophisticated than true mobsters.

There are few signs of alliances with politicians to save their activities or to recycle wealth and material goods in the Balkans. That is exactly what makes them as scary often as vulnerable to the police.

Ms. Arsovska cites as an example what happened in New York with the Albanian criminal organisation “Rudaj”. In the 1990s, it was so powerful that some called it the 6th/2nd criminal family “of the city. Others of Italian origin remain at work while Rudaj's gang is in prison.