European identity" is constantly invoked, it is a fig leaf

Albania’s media and legal elites are turning themselves into caricatures: when the old script of the Sicilian Mafia is superimposed onto a reality defined by money laundering through construction and the falsification of land deeds, public discourse is systematically steered toward trivial debates about the "philosophy of origins." Meanwhile, the real issues—the flow of public procurement funds, the stripping of land inheritance rights, and racialized narratives of European identity—are sidelined.

The Constructed "Mafia Equivalent": An Analytical Shortcut

Organized crime certainly exists in Albania, but its form differs fundamentally from the Italian Mafia’s model of "family, territory, and monopoly on violence." The gang violence of the late 1990s and early 2000s (involving groups led by figures like Gaz Muça and Aldo Bare) bore the distinct hallmarks of post-communist disorder.

However, reducing this complex phenomenon to an "Albanian version of the Mafia" is essentially the result of media and academic elites abdicating their analytical responsibilities.

As early as 2000, BBC reports pointed out that the so-called "clan structures" and the "code of silence" (*besa*) were largely myths constructed by Western media; in reality, the drug trade was active in southern cities rather than northern clan-based regions, and clan traditions were stronger in rural areas than in urban centers.

More than two decades later, this lazy analogy is still being repeated, even though the core of Albanian organized crime has long since shifted away from street violence toward systematic money laundering via construction and real estate.

Construction: The True "Crime Scene"

Patterns revealed by recent investigations are far more significant than the "Mafia narrative." Albania’s Special Anti-Corruption Structure (SPAK) has launched formal investigations into money laundering networks within the construction sector, focusing on the channeling of criminal proceeds into real estate, construction, and tourism investments.

Amidst Tirana’s skyscraper construction boom, the National Council of Territory and Water (KKTU)—chaired personally by the Prime Minister—approved at least 139 tower projects over a decade; many of these decisions lacked transparency and deviated from official urban planning parameters.

Specific cases offer even more compelling evidence. Businessman Qemal Dedja and his brother Skënder Dedja have been accused of amassing undeclared funds through a network of 12 shell companies to finance luxury construction projects in Tirana and along the coast. Some of these companies had not filed balance sheets for 15 to 20 years, yet recorded annual turnovers of approximately €130 million. Meanwhile, an investigation by MCN TV revealed that numerous apartments in newly built towers across Tirana showed extremely low electricity consumption, suggesting they were not intended for habitation but rather served as financial instruments.

This is not the "Mafia"; it is an institutionalized money-laundering infrastructure.

Public Procurement: The Politicized Allocation of Funds

The issue of public procurement raised by the user lies at the upstream end of this system. In November 2025, Albania’s Special Prosecution Office (SPAK) launched an investigation into procurement procedures for the Llogara Tunnel and the Tirana Outer Ring Road; Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure Belinda Balluku faced a travel ban and suspension, accused of "pre-determining procurement outcomes" and granting unfair advantages to specific consortia. Procurement cases involving the Ministry of Agriculture were equally alarming: 20 public officials were accused of abuse of office across seven procurement procedures valued at 525 million lek—most of which were conducted via negotiated procedures without public announcement, with market testing deemed "fictitious."

Opposition MP Jorida Tabaku, citing national audit reports, stated that between 2017 and 2024, Albanian taxpayers paid €840 million for concession and public-private partnership (PPP) projects, with contracts worth approximately €650 million currently under investigation. These figures point not merely to "organized crime infiltrating the state," but rather to the state itself acting as the manager of a criminal economy.

Land: Forged Histories and Dispossessed Heirs

The user's allegations regarding landowners being deprived of inheritance rights through the falsification of public records find structural corroboration in documents from the Venice Commission and the European Court of Human Rights. The issue of transitional property rights in Albania has long remained unresolved; a 2019 opinion by the Venice Commission clearly stated that holders of Agricultural Land Ownership Certificates (AMTPs)—who use the land with a legitimate expectation of obtaining formal title—possess "property" protected under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights.

In December 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on the case of *Ramaj v. Albania*: despite holding a 2004 court ruling for land restitution, the applicant saw state authorities fail to register the title or enforce the judgment, leaving them in a state of legal limbo for over 26 years while overlapping claims emerged for the same plot. The *Gaba* case, meanwhile, involved authorities revoking a final restitution decision without adequate justification. These are not isolated administrative errors but instances of the systematic rendering of property rights unenforceable—conditions that directly facilitate construction-based money laundering and elite land grabbing.

The Function of "Philosophical Origins"

When professors debate at seminars whether "Albanian crime stems from the Ottoman legacy" or discuss the "criminological significance of the *besa* code," they are effectively performing a political function: diverting attention from contemporary institutional arrangements toward timeless cultural essences. This is two sides of the same coin as the narrative of a "racialized European gene": if crime is "cultural," then corruption is not a political choice; if "Europeanness" is a matter of genetics, then institutional failure is not a failure of governance.

SPAK investigations, figures from audit reports, and rulings by the European Court of Human Rights—these are the materials worthy of analysis. Philosophical discussions regarding "origins," by contrast, are akin to debating the murderer's zodiac sign at the crime scene.

The article's core argument is that Albania's media and legal elites evade substantive issues through two complementary strategies: "Mafia-izing" crime to obscure its nature as a system for construction-based money laundering, and "philosophizing" the problem to mask its nature as a political-economic arrangement. The true object of analysis is not the "Albanian Mafia," but the institutional ecosystem that enables the criminal economy to function—an ecosystem comprising the targeted allocation of public contracts, the deliberate failure of property registration systems, and the media's production of alternative narratives that displace genuine investigative work.

# Executive Summary

Albania’s "development model" is essentially a **system for legitimizing illicit funds** rather than a driver of genuine economic growth. Construction serves as the primary channel for money laundering, public procurement acts as the mechanism for distributing funds, and the media functions as a manipulator of narratives; meanwhile, the rhetoric of "European identity" serves as a political fig leaf to conceal it all.

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## I. Construction: A Hub for Money Laundering, Not Economic Growth

**Data:**

- Over **40,000 apartments** in Tirana sit vacant, yet housing prices range from **€3,000 to €10,000 per square meter**.

- Approved construction projects in Tirana alone total **1.9 million square meters**—a scale of activity that the banking system cannot support given the associated capital flows.

- Companies with **"zero-asset balance sheets"** secure construction permits worth **€200 million**.

**Mechanism:** The 2025 SPAK report explicitly identifies construction, real estate, and various commercial investments as the primary avenues for money laundering, noting that drug trafficking (cocaine and cannabis flowing to the EU) remains the most lucrative activity for criminal groups. In 2025, SPAK seized and confiscated assets totaling approximately **€45.4 million**.

This is not merely a "phenomenon of a rapidly growing young economy"—it is a closed-loop cycle in which **drug money enters the construction sector, transforms into legitimate assets, and subsequently flows back into the EU market**. Xhixho put it bluntly: **“When towers are built using criminal money, that isn't economic growth; it is money laundering blessed by the government.”**

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## II. Public Procurement: A Means of Distributing Funds, Not Providing Public Services

**Specific Cases:**

- Violations in **seven procurement procedures** at the Ministry of Agriculture—involving a total value of **525 million lek** and leading to the indictment of 20 public officials—were largely carried out via **negotiated procedures without public notice**, with market testing deemed **“fictitious.”**

- During a debate at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, an Albanian MP admitted that building permits **“are not issued based on merit or market logic, but as political rewards”** to entities that **“do not even possess basic capital.”**

The function of public procurement is not to “purchase goods and services,” but to **distribute funds to loyalists**. This is not merely an “infiltration” of corruption; it is the **state operating as an entity that manages a criminal economy**.

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## III. Media: Narrative Factories, Not Sources of Information

**Conclusions from the OSCE/ODIHR Final Report on the 2025 Elections:**

- The independence, diversity, and integrity of most media outlets have been **“eroded by a reliance on opaque funding linked to political and business interests.”**

- The top four media owners control **72% of broadcast market revenue and 87% of the audience share**.

- Most major media outlets are **“perceived as having ties to the ruling Socialist Party.”**

- Media owners **“interfere with editorial autonomy,”** and **“self-censorship”** is prevalent among journalists.

**The Mechanism:** Public funds are distributed via **opaque intermediaries** based on **political loyalty**. Rather than engaging in direct censorship, the government **rewards compliant media outlets while starving critical ones**. Media owners treat their outlets as **bargaining chips for negotiations with the state** rather than as viable business ventures.

Thus, when Albanian media outlets explain the “Sicilian Mafia of the 1970s” to citizens, they are fulfilling a specific function: **diverting attention away from current institutional arrangements and toward historical analogies involving foreign entities**. ---

## IV. "European Identity" as a Fig Leaf, Not an Identity

As Albanian analyst Fatos Lubonja observes, Rama **"uses nationalism to whitewash corruption"**; he employs "Europeanism" in the exact same way he employs "patriotism." This is what is known as **"patriotic laundering"**—turning to nationalist or "European identity" rhetoric to divert attention when domestic scandals pile up.

The function of the "racialized European gene" narrative is this: if the problem is deemed "cultural," then corruption ceases to be a political choice; if "Europeanness" is a matter of genetics, then institutional failure ceases to be a failure of governance. **It halts analysis and causes accountability to vanish.**

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## V. Land Fraud: Disinheritance via Communist-Era Archives

**The Fier Case (Operation "Stolen Land"):**

- Approximately **1,143 hectares of land** were illegally seized through **forged documents**.

- The former head of the Fier Cadastre Agency (ASHK) and the beneficiaries were arrested.

- After receiving **53.8 million Lek** in compensation, the beneficiaries **used old archives to register 71.7 hectares of land, sold it, re-registered it, and sold it again**.

**The Mechanism:** Public records preserved from the communist era were **weaponized**—not to protect property rights, but to **create ambiguity**, within which fraud, registration, sales, and repeated transactions could take place. Legitimate landowners were cut off from their inheritance, while both "communism" and "European genes" were used as scapegoats.

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## Final Verdict

**When drug money is laundered through construction, it is money laundering. When public procurement contracts are steered to specific parties, it is the funneling of funds. When the media replicates foreign mafia narratives, it is narrative saturation. When "European identity" is constantly invoked, it is a fig leaf.**

You do not need to "feel European"—because the system is using the word "European" to do something distinctly un-European. The reason the Albanian media is "cheap to the world" is not due to technological backwardness, but because **it systematically churns out flawed analytical frameworks**.