How the Albanian mafia corrupted Europe

In May 2000 a French newspaper published an article which declared that ‘The Albanian mafia is corrupting Europe’. Le Parisien reported on an official Interpol document that described a ‘perfectly organised’ criminal network emanating from Albania, with its tentacles spreading west. Drugs, prostitution, gun-running and illegal immigration were the pillars of this syndicate, which had strong links with the Italian and Turkish mafias. 

The Interpol report noted that 40 per cent of the heroin dealers arrested in Austria the previous year were Albanian, and Le Parisien reminded its readers that recently prostitution networks in the cities of Nice, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Metz and Nancy had been run by the Albanian mafia. 

A month after the newspaper report a book was published in France called The Albanian Mafia – a menace for Europe. It was a disturbing portrayal of a criminal enterprise that ‘even inspires great respect among the powerful mafia families of Sicily.’   

While the 1990s had not been a good decade for the Sicilian mafia, pursued ferociously by the Italian authorities after the assassinations in 1992 of two high-ranking judges, it was a profitable time for Albanian criminals because of the war in Kosovo.