Albanian Organized Crime Seen as Growing Threat in Europe

Albanian organized crime groups have tightened their grip at home and expanded across Europe while drawing minimal pushback from Brussels, according to a Follow the Money investigation conducted with media partner BLAST.

The reporters, who interviewed dozens of current and former officials and law-enforcement sources and reviewed confidential documents, describe a landscape in which criminal clans embed themselves in state institutions, launder money through local firms and real estate, and move record quantities of drugs through EU hubs.

Former police inspector Dritan Zagani, who fled to Switzerland after a 2015 detention, told the outlets that “criminal groups have infiltrated all spheres of the state,” saying Albania has become a “narco-state.”

He recounted a 2013 stop of a black Audi A8 in Fier that officers linked to drug traffickers but were ordered not to search because it reportedly belonged to then-Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri. Prime Minister Edi Rama sided with Tahiri at the time and Tahiri was subsequently convicted by Italian authorities in 2019 for trafficking cannabis, according to the report.

Zagani, who had led the investigation into Tahiri, was later sentenced in absentia to seven years in prison for allegedly overstepping his authority.

The investigation details allegations that senior figures close to Rama have faced scrutiny but little accountability.

Taulant Balla, a former interior minister and minister for relations with parliament, was tied by transcripts from the Sky ECC encrypted-phone probe to drug traffickers and embroiled in a vote-buying scandal. Rama kept him in office, according to the report.

Rama’s brother Olsi was accused in parliament of involvement in a cocaine lab and records viewed by Follow the Money place him behind the wheel of a car later tied to a mafia group, but Albania’s anti-corruption body SPAK cleared him in January.

In the U.S., former FBI agent Charles McGonigal was convicted in 2024 of receiving €225,000 from a Rama associate.

European police say Albanian groups now rival traditional mafias.

Italian anti-mafia prosecutor Nicolo Gratteri told the news outlets that the networks maintain logistics from Albania to Belgium via Germany and “control the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam,” enabling shipments of several hundred kilograms at a time.

Belgian police have raided cannabis plantations tied to Albanian groups. Europol’s 2024 report ranks the Albanian mafia among Europe’s five most threatening criminal groupings for cocaine and cannabis trafficking, and Britain’s National Crime Agency assesses that Albanian groups control much of the UK cocaine market.

Despite mounting concerns, Brussels remains largely supportive of Tirana’s EU bid, according to the report. Critics interviewed by Follow the Money call the stance inexplicable given the scale of the criminal threat.

“The country is completely plagued by corruption and run by Rama and his close associates,” Albania’s former vice-president Arben Ahmetaj told reporters. “I do not understand why Europe turns a blind eye to the reality of the situation.”