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"Fast and with codes", the Italian media analyzes the Albanian mafia: When an Albanian gives you his word, he gives you his son!

2022-09-26 13:35:20Aktualitet SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

"Fast and with codes", the Italian media analyzes the Albanian mafia:

The Italian media speaks with 'superlatives' about the Albanian mafia.

Between 2018 and 2020, the majority of arrests in Europe for cocaine trafficking involved Albanian nationals: 266 people, more than 257 Brazilians and 168 Colombians arrested in the same period. The increase in arrests also coincided with the change in quality: if for years Albanian traffickers were limited to being employees of other criminal organizations, now the criminal groups, structured according to the model of the Italian 'Ndrangheta, have built solid relationships with drug traffickers in South America, especially in Ecuador, where they have increased their influence.

As a simple supporting actor, the Albanian mafia has imposed itself everywhere. According to a recent Europol report, it controls a large part of the cocaine market in the UK and Europe, with strong interests in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Bulgaria and Greece. For reasons of logistics and proximity, the place where business is booming the most is Italy.

During a conference in August, Nicola Gratteri, the public prosecutor in Catanzaro, who has been involved in the fight against the 'Ndrangheta for years, said that "for at least three years I have said that in Europe there is an emerging mafia, the Albanian one. Albania is a corrupt country, where it is easy to corrupt public officials. And if they leave Albania and already have economic power, I can become stronger as an international mafia".

An evidence of the activism of the Albanian mafia comes from police operations. For example, in September 2020 the Los Blancos operation hit the strongest Albanian clan present in Europe, the Bello Company. Italian police, Europol and Eurojust, the European agency for criminal judicial cooperation, participated in the operation. The investigations started from a violent fight that happened in 2014 in the center of Florence. Two opposing groups of Albanian citizens have clashed, competing for prostitution squares between Florence and Prato. The police established that some of the arrested were also involved in drug trafficking.

To communicate with each other, the various members of the organization used the messaging system of BlackBerry phones: following the communications and after an investigation of years, the European police discovered a traffic of cocaine from Ecuador arrived at the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam. From here the cocaine left again, even towards Italy, in trucks. "On each package," explained the national anti-mafia prosecutor, Federico Cafiero de Raho, "the "Bello" brand was placed to prove the claimed quality of the product."

21 Albanian citizens ended up in prison, while 80 others were previously arrested in the Netherlands, Albania, Belgium, Ecuador, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Greece, Romania and Hungary. Two leaders of the organization were also taken: Denis Matoshi, 40 years old, arrested in Dubai and Dritan Rexhepi, also forty years old, captured in Ecuador.

Rexhepi, considered the head of Kompania Bello, had been living in Ecuador for many years. He had arrived after Adriatik Tresa, the longtime leader of the Albanian mafia in South America, who was killed on November 20, 2020 in the gated community of La Aurora, near Guayaquil, the country's most populous city. Four assassins disguised as policemen appeared at the door of his villa, killed him and his bodyguards and left. Tresa was well known to South American and European police forces. It controlled an ever-increasing share of the cocaine trade from one continent to another. In Ecuador he had found a solid and comfortable base.

There are many reasons why the Albanian mafia has chosen Ecuador as a business center: the 700 kilometers of the border with Colombia, the central position, the ports and, above all, widespread corruption among the police and judges. The presence of Albanian drug traffickers in the country has been reported since the early 2000s. And in 2011 the director for South America of the US DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), Jay Bergman, said: "There are Albanian, Ukrainian, Italians, the Chinese in Ecuador, they all have a part of the product to distribute in their respective countries"

Until 2016, the Albanian mafia was limited to supporting the Ndrangheta, which controlled the traffic from South America. That year, however, there was a huge expansion in demand from European countries: production increased, and South American narcos were looking for other interlocutors. The Albanians were ready. They made deals with Constru, one of the strongest paramilitary groups, formed by former members of the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and owners of fields in the department of Putumayo, where cocaine production is large. Albanians were among the first to use submarines to transport cocaine from Ecuador to North and Central America. A submarine with seven tons of cocaine was discovered in 2013 in Limones, in the province of Esmeraldas in northern Ecuador.

Even in Italy, the Albanian mafia started as a supporting actor and then established itself as an independent and increasingly powerful organization. According to the DIA's 2020 annual report, the Department of Anti-Mafia Investigation:

"Albanian criminals present in most of the national territory express themselves through different levels of operations. Some operate within small groups, including multi-ethnic groups, to commit property crimes. In other cases, the presence in the country of structured and stable criminal organizations, which operate in a similar manner to those of the "typical mafia", has been found. Albanian crime is mainly active in drug and arms trafficking, as well as human trafficking and exploitation of prostitution, sometimes in functional agreements with organizations of different ethnic groups (Romanian and Nigerian)".

The Albanian mafia has deep relations with all the Italian organized crime groups. Relations with the Sicilian mafia date back to the 1990s when Cosa Nostra, hit hard by judicial initiatives, found an effective ally in Albanian families. According to police reports, important mafia families already have their headquarters in Vlora, Albania, while in Italy they have contracted Albanian prostitution record organizations. Business relations with the 'Ndrangheta are very close. Important elements of Kompania Bello, arrested later, lived in Calabria, in Platì and Bovalino. And a close collaboration between the 'Ndrangheta and Albanian crime has long been discovered in northern Italy, especially in Piedmont and Liguria.

With the Sacra Corona Unita, the Apulian mafia active above all in Salento, the deals have been stable for years. Albanian gangs use the coast of Apulia to bring marijuana and hashish to Italy, especially from Wallonia: Sacra Corona Unita provides rafts, smugglers and anchor points.

The Albanian mafia was founded only on family ties. Clans are called tribes and are expressions of one or more families that still have blood ties between them. There is a governing council, Bajraku, comparable to the mafia dome. Each group has a leader, the Chairman, and a vice-chairman, the Chairman, who in turn has a deputy who is the liaison with all members of the organization. No one, within the clan, is considered a worker. An English journalist, John Lucas, who has studied Albanian clans for a long time, wrote that "Albanian gangsters say that their sense of honor prevents them from taking orders. "Criminal relationships are equal and when a boss makes decisions, instructions are usually given respectfully to avoid offending others."

There is no oath formula for clan members; however, there is an unwritten code, based on faith, that is, trust, honoring the word. Lucas always explains: "Trust is the cornerstone of a code of honor that is summed up by this motto: "When an Albanian gives you his word, he gives you his son"/ ILPOST.IT


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