The constant flow of laundered drug money into Albania through organised crime has enriched a tiny minority at the cost of distorting politics and impoverishing the rest of the population.
Gjergj Erebara
It was always known – and always officially denied – that Albania’s construction boom, which started in 2018, was fuelled mainly from laundered drug money earned by Albanian organised crime structures across the world.
And if both law enforcement and the population appeared tolerant of this money laundering, it was in the belief that such money could help one of the poorest economies in Europe to leapfrog its peers.
The truth, however, is that drug money goes to a small minority of Albanians and its costs are paid by the rest of society.
The increase in dirty money coming into the country can be observed in changes in the national currency’s exchange rate with the euro, and tracked via crime reporting.
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