Cocaine trafficking in Albania prompts the establishment of dozens of new companies to import exotic fruits from Latin America

Port of Durrës

 The "Unpublished" documentary in Euronews Albania investigates the cocaine trafficking scheme and how businesses importing and exporting exotic fruits are used for cocaine trafficking from Latin America to the final destination EU countries.

In the last 10 years the import of bananas have almost doubled, from 17 thousand tons in 2010, the imports have gone to 31 thousand tons of bananas in 2020. And this increase in imports coincides with the increase in the number of new companies that deal with the import of exotic fruits from Latin American countries. This is the most widespread way in recent years to use Albania as a transit country for the passage of cocaine to the West. But except for one case, police operations to seize cocaine have all been carried out in the port. Only the carrier and not the person ordering the cargo can be caught there. According to the police, this happens for several reasons.

"It is not said that we have it guaranteed, that in that part of the container or in x place there is cocaine. The information may come incomplete, which means may be suspicious. There have been plenty of cases before, even since we may have checked other companies or containers and there have been no results. Decisions are taken by the decision of the prosecutor, in the direction of investigative groups. So do not prejudice them because we also want to get to the head, no one wants to catch collaborators element of the second or third level," - says the head of the Narcotics Section in the GDP, Rezar Velmishi.

The most significant increase in the import of bananas and the establishment of companies that import them has been done in the last 3 years. The establishment of new entities in the NRC is done immediately after the seizure of cocaine shipments. Such is the case of the company "Massabi Fruits".

The company "Massabi Fruits" with administrators citizens Erion Peti and Klajdi Xibraku was established on February 28, 2018, three weeks after capturing the largest load in the country 613 kg of cocaine, on behalf of the company led by Arbër Çekaj.

One day after the opening of Massabi Fruits, on March 21, 2020, another banana company is established, the Exoalmax entity with owner Selim Çekaj, the father of Arbër Çekaj. He was arrested on April 1 this year after 49kg of cocaine was found in the consignment of bananas ordered by his company. These are just a few companies that have been established in the last three years, while

dozens more have been founded.

These banana import-export companies follow a route for transporting cocaine and the Unpublished documentary traverses this path.

The cargo departs by large ships from the port of "Simon Bolivar" in Ecuador, to arrive at three key transit ports in Europe such as the port of Gioia Taura in Calabria; Port of Piraeus in Greece, or Port of Valletta in Malta. The procedure continues with the unloading of the containers from the ships with ocean capacity to load these containers in small ships - toward the port of Durrës. So the road that cocaine traverses is this: Ecuador- Calabria - Piraeus - Malta - Durres.

This criminal activity brings a lot of income that is being invested in businesses and this brings difficulties in investigating money laundering.

"Such a serious criminal activity, with such quantities of narcotics that requires very large expenses, but that also gives a very large profit, of course, this dirty money will be invested somewhere. Here the crime takes on a different nature, from the place where hashish was planted, from the heroin or cocaine route, we get into that white-collar crime. Crime turns into business and in these conditions, it becomes difficult to investigate money laundering," said former prosecutor Besnik Muçi.