‘I Might Buy it All’: Albania Fights Losing Battle against Money Laundering

Shkodra local Kastrati was arrested in Denmark, where he goes by the name Sokol Krasniqi, in June 2019 during an operation codenamed Goldfinger involving some 30 people accused of trafficking at least 1.65 tonnes of cocaine from the Netherlands to Denmark and Sweden.

According to court papers, Kastrati smuggled at least four million euros in cash into Albania between 2013 and 2019, investing the money in real estate in the seaside Shkodra neighbourhood of Velipolja and in Rens 2015.  Prosecutors are investigating Kastrati's brother-in-law, Astrit Beqiri, and another man identified as Dhimiter Shkodrani in connection with the cash.

In the wiretaps, Kastrati brags about illegally adding an entire floor to three beachfront apartments before somehow securing the papers to legalise it.

"For as long as you are permitted, everything goes into buildings, buildings…" Kastrati says. "It's pretty," he said of the apartment complex. "I might buy it all."

Kastrati's escapades are not unique. Albania is considered particularly vulnerable to money laundering, with drug trafficking the chief of source of "dirty money" penetrating the country's meagre economy, according to Albania's General Directorate for the Prevention of Money Laundering.

But it doesn't simply end in beach apartments and chicken farms. The proceeds of organised crime finance political corruption, sway elections and win protection from prosecution, experts say, seriously undermining the development of a normal economy based on the rule of law.

"No individual, family, business or country can be enriched and develop economically if they tolerate criminal proceeds in their economy and politics," said Arben Malaj, a professor of economics and former finance minister.

...