If you've bought cocaine in Europe
any time in the last five years, chances are it’s passed through
an Albanian organized crime group. My job in London is
to move kilograms of cocaine. We can move up
to 50 kilos per week. I got shot here. Plenty of times. I’m alive. Plenty of my friends - they’re dead. Over the past decade, Albanian crime groups
have overtaken all rivals to become some of the most crucial
players in global drug trafficking. This is how criminal networks
from a tiny European country have revolutionized
the international cocaine business. [THE WAR ON DRUGS SHOW] [THE ALBANIAN MAFIA] Europeans love coke. In fact, in 2021, reports emerged
that the European cocaine market had surpassed the US in value
for the first time ever. Stoners are stoners, psychonauts are psychonauts, everybody fucking takes ching, mate. Used to be a rich man’s drug,
and now it’s everybody. This decade-long explosion
in European coke habits has largely been supplied by
a relatively new type of trafficker: the highly successful
organized crime groups drawn from Albanian communities
all over the continent. Got dragged into it
by some Albanians. That’s how I got into it
at first, really. There’s always Albanian gangs about. It’s a 24/7 service. You call them up any time of the day,
they’ll come drop you. Just give them the address. It’s like McDonald’s, but for drugs. Albania is a small country
with a population of under 3 million. For decades, it was ruled by a brutal authoritarian
communist regime, which is actually part of the reason
it’s now become so prominent in international organized crime. <i>We’re tending to see that many of
the former communist security sectors</i> <i>were made redundant by the state.</i> <i>So they either tended to go into</i> <i>these more informal organizations
and networks</i> <i>or they went into
private security provision,</i> which then very easily also become
transposed into illicit activities and informal activities. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Albania suffered a series of wars
and financial crises, which not only flooded the country
with weapons but caused thousands of refugees
to flee to the rest of Europe and North America. <i>Many of these were youngsters.</i> <i>They had family connections
back in Albania,</i> <i>which they’d maintained.</i> <i>And recognizing that
it was important for them to</i> maintain those family connections in order to grow
as a criminal organization. Albanian criminal groups have been heavily involved in drug trafficking
for decades, largely working with Turkish networks supplying heroin on the route
from Afghanistan into Europe. Then in the 1990s, Albania exploded as a hub
for European cannabis production. <i>Over the years,
this once poor, desolate village</i> <i>became a European marijuana bazaar.</i> Absolute mountains of the stuff. Traffickers dealt
directly with farmers. Bigger farmers became bigger players. Organized crime moved in. But what’s really set the Albanian
organized crime groups apart is how, since around the mid-2000s, they’ve revolutionized
the cocaine trade. We’ve had this alliance with the Albanians. They are the biggest drug exporters. Traditionally, the different parts
of the cocaine business were kept separate. South American cartels would
sell to international traffickers, who would smuggle the drug
around the world but would usually sell it on
to local criminal groups to distribute on the streets. The Albanians took control
of the entire chain. They went out to South America, formed their own contacts
with the cartels, and organized transportation back to
their own suppliers in Europe, who would distribute the drugs
for maximum profit. So are there Albanian
criminal members in Colombia who the clan deals with? Yeah, of course there are
Albanians here in Colombia. They usually send people to verify that
the quality of the drugs is really pure. The Albanians are known for
being very aggressive, okay? And if someone goes onto their territory, they’ll destroy everything
that crosses their path. They don’t care about wiping
out a whole family. The Albanian supply model
has been so successful. And the only way that
they would make more money was if they were able to
go to the source of the drug. So instead of purchasing these drugs
from other drug dealers, they decided their next move, and let’s gain those connections
with South America and then ship these drugs in. They completely took over
the whole drug trade in terms of cocaine. There have been
a series of high-profile killings and arrests of Albanian traffickers stretching from Ecuador
to New York to the Netherlands. Albanians now make up
by far the largest percentage of foreign-born inmates
in British prisons. And the EU Crime Agency’s
biggest ever operation was specifically targeted at the Albanian organized crime group
Kompania Bello. Inevitably, this has led to
some myths and misconceptions about how these groups operate. The first is that
there’s some kind of single, shadowy organization
operating as the Albanian mafia. The reality is that rather than being these very hierarchically organized,
tightly disciplined structures that we saw, for example,
with the Italian mafia organization, what we have instead
is more regional-based, plan-based, family-based networks. The other great myth about
the Albanian organized crime groups is that they are uniquely
violent and brutal. If you cross them, they’re gonna use violence. Kidnapping, taken away not to be returned again. They’ll just... make you disappear. There’s no doubt that
Albanian drug traffickers use extreme violence. But every drug trafficking
organization uses violence. In an illegal marketplace, this is pretty much the only way
to enforce contracts and intimidate rivals. But the idea that Albanian
criminal groups are uniquely violent in ways that other traffickers aren’t really just feeds into
familiar cycles of misinformation that go back decades
in the war on drugs. The way that the operations
of these groups is presented is that the success, as it were, of specific trafficking organizations
or criminal groups is determined by
their proclivity to violence. In the case of the Albanians,
what we're seeing is, instead of this ability for violence, it's more the capacity
for entrepreneurship, a willingness of mobility,
a capacity to move around globally. Of course, some Albanian criminals are often happy for people to think
they are ultra-violent killers, which can lead to groups
like the Hellbanianz in the UK, who literally advertise their
trigger-happy, narco-bling lifestyles in music videos. But the real power
in Albanian drug trafficking isn’t held by street-level gangs
like the Hellbanianz but by sophisticated,
tightly controlled trade networks that stretch over continents. Because, in reality, the Albanian
traffickers haven’t achieved power primarily through starting wars
with other criminal groups but through forming
business relationships with them. God bless Albania. We keep a good relationship
Otherwise... There’s no coke. It goes from Colombia with the big boats. Sometimes it comes to Albania. From here, we go Montenegro,
Serbia, Bosnia. When the Albanian crime groups
do inflict violence, it’s very often to maintain
internal discipline rather than fighting
other groups over territory. This is helped by the fact that
wherever in the world they operate, their workers can be controlled
through threats of violence against their families
back in Albania. For example, if I get caught by the police,
someone will come to replace me. It’s very simple. Because you have a family back home,
normally you will do what they say. It’s better for me to go to prison than
for my family to get buried underground. And of course, as so often
in the war on drugs, the ability to buy and sell
politicians and cops is as important as the ability
to buy and sell cocaine or heroin. What most empowers
the Albanian organized crime groups is that they’re deeply woven into
the country’s ruling class. Former minister of the interior
Saimir Tahiri received a three-year sentence
for abuse of power. The court found he had inexplicable
links to a distant cousin convicted of trafficking
3.8 tons of drugs to Italy. I think what’s
problematic for Albania is that they’ve actually tried
very, very hard to be a good and compliant partner because EU membership,
accession to the EU, has been the real push
for successive Albanian governments. Illegal drug trafficking
is ultimately just a business, and the Albanian organized crime
groups have taken over the industry not by being sociopathic monsters but simply by being more efficient and innovative business people
than anyone else. And by killing a fair few people
along the way. Who do you buy it from? I have an Albanian friend
that I go to. -Albanian?
-Yes. What’s different about him
compared to other dealers? Ooh, so much more efficient. And as long as these drugs
remain illegal, it is these types of business people
who will continue to thrive and make billions. <i>We’d like to congratulate drugs
for winning the war on drugs.</i>
