On a locked down November afternoon in 2020, as Europe grappled with Covid 19 restrictions, two Albanian men based in Belgium exchanged a handful of encrypted messages. Deciphered years later from the Sky ECC platform, their words captured a watershed moment in Europe’s cocaine trade. A shipment measured not in kilograms, but in tons, described as the biggest job in history. The exchange would later become evidence in prosecutions led by Albania’s Special Structure Against Corruption and Organized Crime, SPAK. More broadly, it illuminated a structural shift in Europe’s illicit economy, the rise of Albanian criminal networks from peripheral operators to central power brokers across the cocaine supply chain.
From margins to market makers
For decades, European investigators viewed Italian mafias, above all the Calabrian Ndrangheta, as the unrivalled protagonists of the cocaine trade. The mass decryption of encrypted communications on platforms such as Sky ECC and EncroChat has overturned that assumption. What emerged instead was a far more fragmented yet coordinated market, in which Albanian speaking networks control or decisively influence multiple nodes of a multi billion euro industry.
Experts interviewed by BIRN and Reporter.al describe cocaine trafficking as the Champions League of organized crime, capital intensive, logistically complex, and extraordinarily profitable. Its complexity, spanning coca fields and laboratories in Latin America, maritime routes, European ports, inland distribution hubs and sophisticated laundering channels, has encouraged specialization. Crime has become a service economy, with different actors offering discrete capabilities rather than vertically integrated empires. Albanian groups have thrived precisely because they mastered this logic.
The Sky ECC shock
The Sky ECC investigation, initiated in Belgium and the Netherlands and later expanded through French judicial authorization, functioned as a Rosetta Stone for European law enforcement. By intercepting and transcribing communications routed through servers in France, authorities gained unprecedented visibility into criminal coordination on a continental scale. According to Belgian investigators, Albanian was the second most used language on the platform after English, an indicator of the networks’ reach.
For SPAK, access to these datasets catalyzed a new, data driven investigative model. Albanian prosecutors have registered around 60 criminal proceedings based on Sky ECC evidence, resulting in security measures against some 340 suspects linked to high risk criminal networks. The cases reveal semi hierarchical structures, clear role differentiation, long term planning and systematic use of technology to evade detection.
Tonnes, not kilos
Nothing illustrates the scale of Albanian involvement better than the so called Çela Çopja network. Operating from Paraguay to Antwerp and Hamburg, the group allegedly trafficked more than 36 tonnes of cocaine to Europe in just six months, while stockpiling another 22 tonnes for future shipments. Even a record 16 tonne seizure by German authorities in 2021 failed to halt its operations.
Former SPAK head Altin Dumani has described the Çela Çopja organization as the largest Albanian cocaine network ever uncovered by volume, though far from the only one. Over the past year alone, Albanian prosecutors have announced the dismantling of nine additional groups accused of moving more than 16 tonnes from Latin America to Europe.
These volumes matter not only for their criminal audacity but for their market effects. Large and reliable supplies allow traffickers to stabilize availability, influence wholesale prices and indirectly shape retail markets across Western Europe. As a result, Albanian groups have moved from being logistical subcontractors to de facto market makers.
Partnership with the Italian mafias
The Albanian ascent did not occur in isolation. Italian mafias, especially the Ndrangheta, played a formative role by opening doors in Latin America and West Africa, sharing port access and diaspora infrastructure. Many leading Albanian traffickers began their criminal careers in Italy, forging ties with clans in Calabria and Puglia.
Over time, the relationship evolved. What began as mentorship became partnership. Today, Albanian networks often negotiate directly with producers and brokers in South America, while coordinating distribution with Italian groups inside Europe. As Professor Anna Sergi of the University of Bologna notes, there is scarcely a major cocaine operation linked to the Ndrangheta that does not involve Albanian or Western Balkan partners.
Yet structural differences remain. Italian mafias retain territorially rooted, hierarchical organizations with deep political penetration. Albanian groups, by contrast, function as decentralized, project based networks, small cells linked by trust, kinship and reputation. This flexibility makes them harder to infiltrate and quicker to regenerate when disrupted.
Why Europe, why now
The timing of Albanian expansion coincides with a surge in global cocaine production after Colombia’s 2016 peace accords with FARC, which unleashed large scale coca cultivation. Oversupply pushed down prices at origin and encouraged traffickers to seek new efficiencies and routes. Europe, with rising demand and high retail margins, became the prime target.
Here, Albanian networks exploited several comparative advantages. Multilingual operatives, dense diasporas across Western Europe, strategic presence in ports such as Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg, and the capacity to corrupt key gatekeepers. They do not always own the cargo, but they can guarantee container extraction, organize secondary transport and neutralize risks at critical chokepoints.
Profits, prices and wild capitalism
Europe’s cocaine market is now estimated at over 10 billion euros annually, with consumption between 200 and 400 tonnes. Seizures have reached record levels, around 400 tonnes in 2023, yet wholesale prices have fallen sharply. In Antwerp and the Netherlands, prices reportedly dropped from 28 to 30 thousand euros per kilo to as low as 14 to 18 thousand.
This paradox, record seizures alongside falling prices, signals a resilient and adaptive criminal economy. Lower wholesale prices expand profit margins, attract investment capital and incentivize further innovation. Daniel Brombacher of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime describes this as a form of wild capitalism, a risk priced market with no regulator, where competition is resolved through domination or violence.
Laundering the proceeds
Albania’s role in this ecosystem is less about hosting traffickers and more about recycling their profits. As enforcement pressure rises abroad, Albania has become attractive for laundering through construction, services and informal transfer systems such as hawala. The influx of illicit capital distorts markets, undermines fair competition and corrodes institutions through corruption.
SPAK officials warn that the social consequences are equally corrosive. Organized crime normalizes impunity, erodes trust in the rule of law and damages the moral legitimacy of the state, effects that extend far beyond the underworld.
A temporary shock
The Sky ECC revelations, the creation of SPAK and intensified international cooperation have undoubtedly disrupted Albanian networks. But most experts caution against optimism. These groups do not suffer from a shortage of recruits, and their modular structures allow rapid replacement of arrested leaders. Even when a clan falls, the infrastructure, contacts, routes and expertise often remains intact.
As long as European demand for cocaine continues to grow, supply will adapt. Albanian organized crime, forged through two decades of global integration, has proven uniquely adept at doing so. The Sky ECC files revealed how it conquered the market. The harder question is whether Europe’s institutions can now reclaim it.
Based on reporting by Besar Likmeta and Klodiana Lala for Reporter.al.
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