From towers to “new pyramids”: how money from organized crime, international drug trafficking and entrenched corruption is reshaping Tirana while leaving behind empty buildings, distorted prices and a deeper threat to Albania’s future.
Tirana Times, April 11, 2026 – The forest of cranes and high rise towers that now dominates Tirana’s skyline is often presented as proof of growth, modernity and confidence in Albania’s future. But behind the glass façades and luxury developments, a darker question is becoming harder to ignore: who is really financing Albania’s construction boom?
Increasingly, the answer points not to genuine market demand or broad based prosperity, but to the inflow of illicit wealth generated by organized crime, international drug trafficking and systemic corruption. In that sense, Tirana’s towers are not simply symbols of urban transformation. They are also emerging as the most visible monuments of an economy distorted by dirty money.
The mismatch between the scale of construction and Albania’s economic reality is striking. “The usefulness of towers in serving other businesses is unclear. We are not in a country where foreign companies are arriving in large numbers, where major businesses are expanding and demanding office space, or where public welfare has risen at such a pace as to justify this level of high quality units,” analyst Neritan Sejamini says. His point goes to the heart of the issue: the market logic behind this vertical boom is weak, while the suspicion that towers are being used to absorb and legitimize illicit funds is growing stronger.
The numbers are staggering. Between 2015 and the end of 2025, Tirana approved 9.9 million square meters of construction permits, according to the data cited in the material. Of that total, 4.8 million square meters were approved for high rise buildings above eight floors. In all, permits were granted for 107 tall buildings, with an average height of 20 floors. According to Builders Association head Erjon Harizi, the construction cost of towers ranges from 2,000 to 3,000 euros per square meter, depending on quality and height.
These are projects requiring vast amounts of capital. Yet the domestic market does not appear capable of sustaining them through normal demand. By the end of 2025, according to Altax, the average apartment sale price in Tirana had reached 1,833 euros per square meter, while the Albanian Real Estate Association placed the average at around 1,900 euros. In premium central areas and in Tirana e Re, prices range from 3,000 to 4,500 euros per square meter. At those levels, an apartment can easily cost half a million euros or more, far beyond the means of most Albanians.
At the same time, the demographic and housing data tell a different story from the one suggested by the tower boom. The 2023 census shows that Tirana has 52,871 unoccupied housing units, including 39,765 apartments. Population growth in the capital has slowed dramatically, from 2.15 percent in 2015 to just 0.23 percent in 2025. In other words, the city is producing more and more high end real estate even as real demand weakens and Albanians continue to leave the country in large numbers.
Economist Pano Soko argues that this is not a natural housing market. “For all these apartments that are sold and remain empty, we are talking about housing whose primary function should be for a family to live in them. But they remain empty because those who bought them bought them for another purpose, not to live there. This is not natural demand coming from society,” he says. In other words, many of these apartments are not homes. They are vehicles for storing capital.
The alleged origins of that capital have become more visible through investigative reporting and law enforcement findings. Journalist Klodiana Lala says that the decryption of the SKY ECC encrypted app showed Albanian criminal groups have become far more powerful in recent years, taking leading roles in narcotics trafficking not only across Europe but also in producer countries. According to investigations by Albania’s Special Anti Corruption Structure, part of the money generated from these activities enters the Albanian economy and is laundered through construction, money transfer companies and other cash based businesses.
Journalist Andi Tela has raised similar concerns, pointing to cases in which newly created companies with no financial history or experience are awarded permits for major construction projects. “This explains very clearly how the money comes from abroad and is invested here. It is laundered and parked,” he says. Tela links the growth of these criminal capital flows to the 2014 to 2015 period, when large scale cannabis cultivation gave criminal groups their initial capital, which was later poured into concrete.
Economist Zef Preçi describes the phenomenon as a sign of systemic institutional failure. In his assessment, the informal and criminal economy may account for more than one third of Albania’s GDP, perhaps close to 40 percent. He argues that construction has become the main “washing machine” for these funds, while the state often ends up legitimizing them through permits, taxes and the absence of serious scrutiny over business plans. “The pumping of money into the economy, regardless of its origin, leads to economic growth. But this is not a sign of health. It is a symptom of a distorted economy,” Preçi says.
The dependence of public finances on this model only deepens the risk. Tirana Municipality itself has become heavily reliant on construction related revenue. For 2026, it expects to collect 83 million euros from the infrastructure impact tax on new permits and another 43 million euros from property tax. Together, those two sources make up 56 percent of its own source revenues. Sejamini warns that the city’s budget is now structurally tied to the continuation of construction. The question, he says, is what happens if the building frenzy stops.
That dependence creates a dangerous cycle. The more permits are issued, the more the local state relies on construction. The more construction expands, the more property prices rise, inequality deepens and ordinary citizens are pushed out of the housing market. Rather than serving as a development engine for society, the sector risks becoming a mechanism through which illicit wealth, corrupt money and political privilege are converted into legal assets.
In that sense, Tirana’s towers may yet become Albania’s new pyramids. Not in the narrow sense of the 1990s financial schemes, but as monuments to an unsustainable and fraudulent model of growth, one inflated by dirty money, detached from real demand and disconnected from the needs of society. Hundreds of thousands of square meters may remain empty while citizens emigrate, families cannot afford housing and the capital loses its function as a city to live in rather than a place to park illicit capital.
The question, then, is no longer only where the money comes from. It is what Albania will be left with when this model reaches its limits: a skyline of empty towers, a housing market priced beyond the reach of its own people, and an economy more vulnerable than ever to the corrosive power of organized crime, trafficking and corruption.
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