Drugs, spies and cameras: Albania struggles to curb criminal gangs

Albania’s Edi Rama is one of the most pro-western leaders in the Balkans, a former basketball player and artist who came to power promising a remorseless clampdown on criminal gangs.

Yet a decade on, Rama’s struggles to deliver on that pledge are becoming increasingly plain, as the poster boy for Balkan progressives has been dragged into several scandals that have tarnished his image domestically and abroad.

Rama has been forced to defend reforms allegedly friendly to money launderers, explain how old government associates were implicated in drug trafficking investigations, and account for his role in the downfall of a disgraced FBI officer.

Lutfi Dervishi, an independent political analyst and former executive director of Transparency International in Albania, said: “The biggest damage has been to the country’s international reputation. The prime minister was once a star of international media.”

He said Rama had handled multiple crises well, including the coronavirus pandemic, “but now, like a boomerang, suddenly he’s in the limelight for negative news”.

The power of criminal networks in Rama’s Albania was spectacularly laid bare last month. Police took down hundreds of surveillance cameras installed by criminals — a vast espionage operation monitoring law enforcement and rivals.

The revelations made for an uneasy backdrop for Rama, 58, who had been courted by the west as a kindred spirit in a region known for its shifting allegiances.

From a family of artists, Rama began his career as a basketball player, then spent a decade painting in Paris before returning to Albania and entering politics. His office still features basketball memorabilia and his own colourful doodles on the walls. As mayor of Tirana in the early 2000s, he helped transform the capital by repainting dull communist-era apartment blocks in vibrant colours.

Rama has defended his efforts to root out gangs: “Fighting crime and trafficking has been a priority for this government,” he told the Financial Times through a spokesperson.

Yet his government courted controversy last year by seeking to offer a tax amnesty on the repatriation of undeclared foreign earnings of up to €2mn, a move that critics say would give high-earning criminals a free pass.

The law is pending parliamentary approval even though previous draft versions were criticised by the EU, which Albania is a candidate to join. Rama’s government has said the law would apply only to legal income.

That followed other scandals. Dervishi said Transparency International’s corruption perception index for Albania has gone “only down” since 2016. “I have kept a running note this year of the major corruption-related scandals. I’m well past a dozen,” he said.

Senior members of Rama’s previous administrations have been implicated in drug cases. Former interior minister Saimir Tahiri was jailed for abuse of office over ties to a trafficking ring.

Rama’s defenders say previous heads of government would never have allowed the imprisonment of their own officials. But the surveillance scandal angered regular citizens, many of whom believe the government co-operates with drug traffickers.

Those traffickers are expanding their reach. Albanian gangs have expanded from illegal cannabis plantations to trafficking cocaine and heroin directly from Latin America and Asia. Millions of euros poured into Albania, helping to develop luxury real estate along the Mediterranean coast.

“The crime world is strengthening to a new level,” said former justice minister Aldo Bumci, a member of the opposition Democratic party.

He pointed to the coastal developments and gleaming residential towers in Tirana as a destination for illicit cash. “Distribution networks grow, as does money laundering . . . who can afford these apartments? Not ordinary Albanians.”

The glitzy lifestyle of gangsters in one of Europe’s poorest countries contrasts sharply with the struggle of ordinary Albanians, many of whom choose to emigrate. A third of the country’s citizens live abroad, where emigration to the UK has strained relations with London.

Rama’s reputation overseas has also been tainted by his contacts with a disgraced US law enforcement official accused of having helped the Albanian leader persecute political rivals.

The US justice department charged former FBI counter-intelligence chief Charles McGonigal in January with violating US sanctions and engaging in money laundering by working for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

A separate indictment focuses on McGonigal’s undeclared contacts with Rama and claims that he carried out paid services for the Albanians. McGonigal is accused of taking at least $225,000 from an Albanian intelligence officer and then passing information from Rama’s office to US authorities. They in turn opened an investigation into a US-based lobbyist working for the Albanian opposition.

Opposition leader Sali Berisha, a former president and prime minister, claimed his own blacklisting by the US in 2021 was the result of Rama’s alleged contacts with McGonigal. The US decision, “eight years after I left power . . . is based entirely on the lobbying power of Edi Rama”, he told the FT.

Rama denies having used his contacts with McGonigal for that purpose. He noted the McGonigal case made no charges against him and said he has been “used as a scapegoat by many individuals in Albania who have their own ongoing problems with the justice system”.

The top regional envoy of the US government, Gabriel Escobar, said Albania remained a “solid Nato ally — a good bilateral partner”.

Rama’s affable personality has earned him good connections with leaders, including liberals and conservatives from the east and west. He attended the third wedding of George Soros, as well as that of a daughter of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

But municipal elections in May will test the premier’s dominance of Albanian politics. Edval Zoto, an independent analyst, said Rama was suffering “consequences in terms of popular support and public opinion”.

He added, however, that “currently there is no other political offer in Albania”, given that opposition leader Berisha is sanctioned by important allies the US and UK.

Rama’s Socialist party controls every local government except the northern city and province of Shkodër. Close to Montenegro, the city is where the spying scandal began.

Officers sought to obtain footage from those cameras in January after an explosion outside the house of a police commander who had led an operation against cannabis growers and drug trafficking rings. When the local gangsters refused to co-operate, police began taking them down. More than 500 devices were removed across the country.

Rama said at the time that the police operation was “a bit like a Catch-22 situation as we get accused for not taking action and we also get accused when we do take action”.

Artan Hoxha, an Albanian investigative journalist, said he had seen “huge control rooms with lots of screens, where big crime groups keep watch”.

“They had night vision, face and number plate recognition capabilities. Only police should have such cameras. There were even cameras in the woods to monitor the weed plantations.”

Shkodër mayor Bardh Spahia, from Berisha’s opposition Democratic party, said the fear of criminals had triggered an exodus. “This region has 215,000 inhabitants, [but] about 6,000 leave in a year. At that rate, in a decade and a half, half the region will be gone.”

Blaming “dysfunctional state structures”, he said the surveillance scandal was “a drop in the ocean of our crime-infested government”.

Petrit, a café manager in Shkodër, agreed: “What looks like corruption, feels like corruption and sounds like corruption is probably that, corruption . . . No wonder people are leaving in droves.”