Type V ICE: This is the first narco-state confession in Europe, Albania

This article is from %s VICE and is translated, customized for publication by P ERISCOPY. 

The generation of young Albanians is busy among organised crime policy, major unemployment, and quick cash coming from A-class drugs.

It was January, and I was in a tired neighborhood of Tirana when I met two local cocaine traffickers who had returned after a trip to smuggle into Germany. Like many other drug addicts in Albania, Artan and Luli had jumped from cannabis trafficking to cocaine, because it gave more money and was easier. They told me they could make up to 20 thousand Euros by smuggling only 1 kilogram of this substance into one of the European countries where the cocaine market is expanding.

Among the caticist tales of beating with iron fists and baseball bats, they also speak of Rolex, quick squirrels, and beautiful chips. “As you may see,” says Anthony, <x2...if you want to achieve something, you must travel to Germany, Italy or England. Cocaine is a good job. ”

Since the financial crisis took place in its '{0}'90s led to civil misery and chaos, the generation of young Albanians has found themselves trapped under the net of poverty and corruption. For some, the drug trade offers a way out of that situation. But drug smuggling here is not new; it is a trade that has deep roots in Albania. No matter what country it is NATO and is waiting to pave the way for entry into the European Union, Albania has become Europe's first narco-state.

According to the definition of the International Monetary Fund for Narco-state, such is “ai country where all legitimate institutions become penetrated by power and illegal drug trade wealth, such as Venezuela, Guinea-Bisssau and Afghanistan, Albania has bowed to drug money.

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The American State Department's report of 2018 described Albania as home to unbridled <x0 corruption, weak legal and governing institutions, and poor control of limits” with trag trafficking, tax evasion, smuggling and trafficking of people as the most profitable crimes. Drugs is a big business here.

This small, former communist mountainous state on the Adriatic coast is the largest producer of illegal cannabis in Europe. In 2017, police in Albania confiscated 68 tons of marijuana, worth about 650 million euros. But cocaine trafficking is what is giving Albania the status of narcotics-state. Over the past decade, just as Vice, Albanian gangs and street teams discovered Hellbanianz have become big players in the lucrative United Kingdom cocaine market and across Europe. Albanian gangs have made a name for themselves by selling high quality cocaine.

Albanian smugglers have established direct supply lines across South America and the largest cocaine ports in Europe located in Belgium and the Netherlands. In February of last year, police seized 613kg of cocaine hidden in a banana-loaded ship from Colombia that had come from Albania's eastern port of Durres. There has also been an increase in competition among suspected criminals of Albanian origin who are being killed in South America. In 2017, Remzi Azem, a Kosovo Albanian who allegedly sold cocaine, was killed in a gangster style after traveling with his family in an armoured car to Ecuador. A year earlier, Ilir Hidri, another Albanian suspect who was involved in drug trafficking, was killed in the same Ecuador site in the town of Guayaqil.

Albania is unique in Europe because its drug barons are not just people acting outside the law. They have strong ties with those who are leading the country, and often even with those in charge of them, they follow people who commit those crimes.

Drug money is an essential part of Albania's democratic system, because the best way to secure people's votes is to buy them in cash, and the best producer of cash is drug trade. An EU-funded study (LINK), which took place from 2016 to 2019, found that a shocking 20.7 percent of Albanians had been offered money or favors in exchange for their vote. In January, it was found that cocaine gangs had successfully manipulated the elections through vote buying. Africa Krasniqi, head of the Institute for Political Studies in Albania, said the role of criminal gangs in the 2017 elections was even greater than the role of political parties.

“Today, there is a general belief that no one can win the elections without the support of these groups,” he said.

Because the drug trade is so etched with people in power, British intelligence units have been deployed in Tirana to monitor traffickers. A member of a British liaison team told V The ICE, Periscope follows, had evidence that the information they had collected was given to the drug dealers by Albanian police. The British have also joined teams from the United States, the Netherlands and Italy, who decided to get involved after discovering that the information they were sharing with Albanian authorities was ending up in the wrong hands.

Prime Minister Edi Rama's two interior ministers have been toppled by drug-related scandals. The first, Saimir Tahiri is facing charges of drug trafficking and corruption. Tahiri's name was mentioned in several wiretapping provided by Italy's anti-mafia police. He was replaced by Fatmir Xhafaj, whose short time as interior minister ended last year after his half-brother Agroni was sentenced to seven years in prison for drug trafficking in Italy. Although there is no evidence that Xhafaj was directly involved in his brother's crimes, domestic and international pressure led Edi Rama to replace him with another.

In 2017, Ermal Hoxha was imprisoned for 10 years after engaging in a 120 - pound [120 kg] cocaine trafficking operation from Latin America to Western Europe. He is the grandson of Albania's famous communist dictator Enver Hoxha, who led the country for 41 years until his death in 1985.

No one else illustrates the proximity between the Albanian elite and its major drug players or the confession of how this country is becoming Europe's first narcotics, rather than the name of Clement Balil, the owner of a luxury hotel, former civil servant, and the drug lord described by Greeks seeking his arrest as “Pablo Escobar of the Balkans.” A 10,000-page file compiled by the Greek government, revised by the V The ICE describes its $1 billion transnational narcotics empire, built by cannabis and cocaine and delivered to countries like Italy, Greece, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Balili built his empire after Albania's economic collapse in the years of BAR90, caused by the collapse of pyramid schemes that were supported by the current government. Between 1 and 2 billion dollars disappeared at night, and ordinary families lost their savings. According to the 2016 report by the Foundation for Open Society, the combination of high unemployment and small salaries led Albanian gangs to expand since then.

Officially, Balil's business was transportation, fishing, and security. In 2014, he was appointed director of regional transport at the Saranda coastal resort, a country known for drug traffickers. For the past decade, Balili has built a network of luxury hotels on the Albanian coast.

In 2015, Ilir Meta, who serves as president of Albania today, cut off the five - star hotel of Balil, called Santa Quaranta. Along with Meta were then Finance Minister Arben Ahmetaj and Socialist MP Kocho Kokhhima.

Balili himself has been very open to the close ties he had with one of the Albanian political parties, the Socialist Movement for Integration, the ISI. In a media interview this year, Balili explained that his appointment as Transport Director in Saranda came in exchange for financial donations he and his family had given him for the LSI. His grandson serves as mayor of Delvina's hometown of the same party.

Albanians are waiting to see if the EU will open membership negotiations in June, and the free visa-free movement for the EU could soon be removed altogether. France and Holland are now seeing drug gangs as a serious threat so seriously that they are able to stop Albanians completely from visa-free travel.

Prime Minister Edi Rama, a former basketball player who won elections in 2013 with anti-corruption rhetoric, won the support of the international community when he took police to the prominent village of Lazzarat, where cannabis was being cultivated. And yet he has found it difficult to dismiss accusations of fraud and corruption that resulted in violent antigovernmental protests in Tirana. /Periscope