"Couriers of crime"/ The route of dirty money to the borders of Albania

Albanian organized crime groups use ordinary people and passenger transport agencies to smuggle their ill-gotten gains into Albania – often successfully due to a lack of proactive investigations and cooperation with police officers.

In 2022, Livia*, an Albanian student in France landed at Rinas airport with 30 thousand Swiss francs hidden in a meringue tied around her waist. She remembers being anxious, but managed to get past airport security without any problems.

In two other trips to Tirana, she smuggled shipments with a total value of 40 thousand francs. Livia doesn't seem like a typical courier of shady money; she resembles hundreds of other students of European universities.

But when asked by BIRN what she knew about the origin of the money, she coldly replied that she did not care to know where it came from.

"I earned a good salary, which helped me pay off my expenses," she said in one of Tirana's many cafes.

"They choose people who are not suspected. Either they don't have a criminal record, or they need the money, but they still have to be clean, without problems,” she added.

Livia is just one of the many couriers of incalculable amounts of cash of dubious origin, which penetrate the border crossing points of Albania without being dictated to.

Their main origin is thought to come from Albanian organized crime groups, which during the last decade have extended their activity to the countries of the European Union, Great Britain, South America and the United States of America.

Although increasingly transnational, Albanian groups continue to clean their profits in Albania.

Data obtained by BIRN through interviews and court files show that crime structures in the West use ordinary people and more sophisticated mechanisms to smuggle money earned in illegal activities to Albanian borders.

The most widespread form is through road transport agencies, licensed in Albania or in other countries such as Great Britain, Italy or France. According to the investigations analyzed by BIRN, these agencies base their activity on the weak control structures at the border crossing points as well as on the corruption of security employees.

Meanwhile, couriers of small values ??are mainly investigated for the offense of "failure to declare cash at the border" - a criminal offense that is often fined or pardoned as in the case of the 2024 criminal amnesty law.

According to Albanian justice officials, this flow of dirty money is also facilitated by the lack of proactive investigations and real-time cooperation with foreign law enforcement agencies.

Judge Erion Bani of the Special Court told BIRN that in order to find out how innocent the undeclared remittances are at the border, the investigations need to be oriented towards money laundering.

"If someone hides an amount of money for the purpose of acquiring it for himself or for others by helping to hide it, knowing that this income is from criminal activity, he bears responsibility, even if the amount of money is less than the value that should be declared at the border,” said Justice Bani.

There are no proactive investigations

The data published by the General Directorate of Customs show that the main port of undeclared foreign currencies is the port of Durrës, followed by the international airport "Mother Teresa" in Rinas, where the seizure of dry money has increased year after year.

According to the State Police, during 2023 almost 2 million euros and about 455 thousand British pounds were blocked at border crossing points.

The rising trend in cash seizures is most evident for the British pound, which has nearly tripled since 2022.

For economic experts, undeclared money at the border does not necessarily derive from criminal activities, but it shows a trend in this direction as well.

"If the income from the illegal activity of narcotics trafficking is investigated, it has its source from those markets that dominate the trade such as the Netherlands, Great Britain or Italy," said Artan Gjergji, an expert on financial issues.

The data provided by BIRN through requests for the right to information in the District Prosecutor's Offices show that during the years 2020-2023, at least 99 criminal proceedings were registered for the offense of "non-declaration of money and valuables at the border", but in no case the cases were not investigated in light of suspected money laundering.

The largest number of cases was registered by the Prosecutor's Office of Durrës, followed by the Prosecutor's Office of Gjirokastra on the border with Greece and that of Kukes on the border with Kosovo. The Prosecutor's Office of Tirana, which has jurisdiction over Rinas airport, did not make this figure available.

Of the total number made available, 80 cases were sent for trial, but most of them were closed with fines in values ??approximating the percentages benefiting money transfer couriers.

The head of the Prosecutor's Office of Tirana, Arens Çela, told BIRN that of all the cases investigated for non-declaration of money at the border, no case of suspected money laundering has been referred to them by the Police.

"The seizure of undeclared amounts at the border is in all cases incidental and there have been no cases of referred investigations by proactive means, in which we would follow certain persons to investigate the flow of money movement as well as the intended persons , their hosts or escorts," Çela told BIRN.

According to him, the impasse of the investigations is related to the moment of arrest of persons in flagrante delicto.

"It is not possible to prove it, as all the cases are caught in the act and it is not possible to follow the amount of money to follow the people who receive or send it," he added.

Even the Prosecutor's Office of Gjirokastra emphasized in a written response the difficulties in detecting cases suspected of money laundering.

"...we are dealing with citizens investigated for the criminal offense of not declaring money at the border, but they cannot be characterized as money couriers, a term which is much broader than the aforementioned criminal offense," said the Prosecutor's Office of Gjirokastra.

"There are no cases where the suspect admitted to being a money courier," added the Prosecutor's Office.

Cash minibuses

According to the Ministry of Infrastructure, 152 Albanian carriers and 214 foreign carriers were authorized to travel to various European cities and vice versa until July 2024. A number of transport companies of Albanian citizens are registered in Britain and other countries. other European countries, but their number is unclear.

Investigative documents analyzed by BIRN and referred in all cases by law enforcement agencies of partner countries show that Albanian organized crime groups use licensed international passenger transport lines to bring to Albania the money stemming from their illegal activities. .

The role of money courier in these cases is played by the driver or the owner of the agency, who receives payments ranging from 3 percent of the amount being transported up to 7 percent, for cases that are described in the file "with customs guarantee".

Another factor that determines the percentage is the "currency cut"; the smaller it is, the higher the risk of detection and the percentage paid to the courier. Such networks also use a coded language to escape police pursuit, with cash values ??usually described as "passengers".

The French police tracked down such a group in September 2020, after detaining two Albanians in the same passenger transport minibus; the first time with 70 thousand euros and 800 grams of gold jewelry and the second time with 10 thousand euros and 500 grams of gold.

In both cases, the vans appeared to have left from the Alcase hotel in Villeurbanne, a commune near Lyon, whose receptionist was an Albanian with French citizenship known as Sokol Balili alias Sokol Briant.

The 4-year investigations and surveillance reports of the French police, which were then brought to SPAK, pointed to the existence of a structured money laundering group centered on three Albanian passenger transport companies.

The owners of the transport companies, Dritan Ulqinaku of "Tani Tours", Agustin Mesuli of "Erdisa Tours" and Altin Doda of "Altini Travel" were accused of money laundering and creation of a structured criminal group by the Special Prosecutor's Office.

"Numerous minibuses were sent from Albania to Lyon, France to collect the proceeds of the criminal activities of Albanian citizens located throughout the territory of Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes," it is written in a document announcing the charge of the Special Prosecutor's Office.

"These means have few passengers, which shows the low profitability of these companies against transport costs. They themselves use a legal non-profit facade that hides illegal and particularly profitable activities," the French police surveillance report is quoted as saying.

In addition to the transport line with Lyon, Mesuli also operated vans traveling from Albania to Switzerland and Italy. Investigations documented that such vans smuggled up to 60,000 euros per route or their equivalents in Swiss francs and sterling to Albania. The wiretapping also revealed the existence of an agreement with the local police for the controlled introduction of a large amount of money or their support for this activity.

A similar concern was raised in the fall of 2022 by the National Crime Agency in Great Britain, according to which Albanian organized crime groups were smuggling hundreds of millions of pounds a year originating from drug houses or cocaine traffic to Albania.

In at least one case investigated by the British police, a value of 200 thousand pounds was blocked in the van of a transport company licensed in Britain on its way to Albania.

"Albanian groups in the United Kingdom, after making money, have the main objective of leaving the country as soon as possible. That's why they smuggle the money from Britain to Albania, in whatever form they can," declared a senior NCA official.

*The student's name has been changed to protect her anonymity. /BIRN