How to Secure the Elections in Collusion with Organized Crime
Each election cycle, observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe/Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE-ODIHR) descend on Albania with a team of election observers. Some arrive in the country several months prior to the elections for long-term monitoring, while the majority arrives just before the elections to make their performative rounds along different voting centers. These observers usually don’t speak Albanian and only have a basic grasp of the local political context. As local election observer for the Albanian Helsinki Committee during multiple local and national elections I have seen them come and go, on the move from one precarious democracy to the other in a somewhat anachronistic display of concern—nowadays, pretty much every democracy in “the West” has become precarious.
Each election, the OSCE-ODIHR also produces a report with recommendations, which makes for monotonous reading, for two reasons: first, the recommendations are nearly always the same, about strengthening the legal framework and making political party financing more transparent. These recommendations are then symbolically taken on board by a parliamentary committee, in which ruling and opposition parties do battle over how to bend the legal amendments to the Electoral Code to their advantage for the next round. A crisis is manufactured. International mediation jumps to the rescue assisted by strongly worded declarations by “allies.” Second, the observations and recommendations of the OSCE-ODIHR are nearly always fully devoid of a broader political and historical context, as if each election happens in a vacuum. This is problematic because as a result these reports fail to explain why, election after election, very little reform is implemented and why, as a result, every OSCE-ODIHR generally reads like the previous one.
In their report of the 2017 parliamentary elections, we read the following statement:
In the aftermath of the elections, both the [Democratic Party] and [Social Movement for Integration] reiterated their claims to the OSCE/ODIHR [Election Observation Mission] that a massive, wide-ranging vote-buying operation had taken place. Both pointed to some concrete cases, but, in the absence of sufficient conclusive evidence, did not present any legal challenges to the results. They nevertheless maintained their firm assertion that the extent of vote-buying was linked to large amounts of money available from criminal drug cultivation.
In response, the OSCE-ODIHR recommended the following:
Robust efforts are needed to address the persistent issue of vote-buying, both through a civic awareness campaign and prosecutions, in order to promote confidence in the electoral process. A concrete and genuine commitment from political parties to combat vote-buying practices could be made. In addition, a public refusal by politicians to accept financial support from individuals with a criminal past would help build public trust in the integrity of the elections.
In the following, I provide evidence, based on leaked wiretaps published by several foreign media outlets and the more recent indictment dossier pertaining to large criminal group led by a former Socialist Party (PS) deputy and political ally, that above call for “robust efforts” borders on the naive.
On September 11, 2016, the county of Dibra held by-elections for the office of former PS mayor Shukri Xhelili. Xhelili had been dismissed after a video of him soliciting sexual favors in exchange for employment had surfaced in the media.1 The election was won by PS candidate Muharrem Rama with a remarkably broad margin. In the run-up to the elections, the opposition Democratic Party (PD) filed charges against a number of public officials, alleging the existence of a criminal organization involved in vote buying and intimidation. The Serious Crime Prosecution Office received authorization to wiretap about twenty phone numbers in the days leading up to the elections, including those of PS officials. This was the beginning of “Dossier 184/2016.”
In January 2019, Voice of America published extracts from this dossier, broadly confirming the allegations of the PD. In June, the German daily Bild published excerpts from these wiretaps. The recordings feature instances of intimidation, such as when then PS deputy Pjerin Ndreu and PS official Arben Keshi, a former local PS chairman and then a director at the Ministry of Interior Affairs, order a local official to pressure school directors to vote PS. Keshi, together with a local police chief, also organizes the setting up of roadblocks near Kamza to prevent voters living there from traveling to Dibra to vote.
After their resounding victory, PS deputy Artan Gaçi congratulates Keshi with the results of the election and his efforts in securing votes. Gaçi also tells Keshi that Prime Minister Edi Rama told him that “all of Maqellara [in Dibra] was thanks to you. He said he is the man. […] He fixed it, he is responsible for everything there.” Indeed, during election day, Keshi kept Prime Minister Rama personally informed about the progress in Dibra as reported to him by the voting center commissioners, which previously he had claimed to be “in the bag”:
Keshi: Hey, boss!
Rama: Hey, what does it look like?
Keshi: Well, fine, we are within the expectations.
Rama: You think you have reached the objective, right?
Keshi: I think so. Now, based from what I am getting from the commissioners, we have achieved it.
Prime Minister Rama later acknowledged the existence of this conversation. Also Former Minister of Energy Damian Gjiknuri can be heard on the recordings, offering the help of some “problematic boys” in rounding up votes, explicitly referring to criminal groups. He is also recorded bragging with one of these “boys,” Ymer Lala, after the electoral victory:
Gjiknuri: Earthquake! Earthquake! Wow! Wow! Wow! Earthquake! Fuck them all!
Lala: You see what the two of us have achived!
Gjiknuri: Earthquake!
Lala: Hey, the man [sc. Rama] was writing to me.
Gjiknuri: Yeah…
Lala: I told him, are you asleep. No, man, he said, I am stunned, I cannot sleep […] I told him you have not really known Damian Gjiknuri and myself then. […]
Gjiknuri: Fuck them all! I think your word of over 1,000 [votes] is proven right now!
Other wiretaps evidenced the involvement of PS deputies, ministers, and officials in the vote-rigging scheme. In August 2019, Dossier 184/2016 was demoted from the Serious Crimes Prosecution Office to the local Dibra Prosecution Office, where a family member of Keshi was prosecutor. As of today, none of the high officials involved in the Dibra electoral fraud scandal have been indicted.
In recent weeks, Dossier 184/2016 was thrust back into public attention when the Italian investigative program Report referred to several previously unpublished wiretaps featuring Gaçi in conversation with Lala, whom the Italian program refers to as “head of a narcotrafficking cartel from Dibra.”
Lala: I had 8 [voting] centers of the city, 3 villages of Kastriot, and 3 of Kosova…
Gaçi: All the bad ones…
Lala: Those that have been with minus last years [sc. lost to the opposition]… I took them all, if you like I send you photos…
Gaçi: No, does he [sc. Rama] know it? Does he know it?…
Lala: No, I don’t know because I didn’t meet him myself to tell him… I told Damian [Gjiknuri]. […]
Gaçi: 61 [voting centers] you took?
Lala: 61. I got them all in the plus [sc. won them for the PS], there was only one that has been -158 [votes] which I got to -17 [votes], understand?
Gaçi: Basically nothing. […]
Lala: I told them, where are the strongholds here? Keep those. Here are those of the LSI and those of PD, leave those to me…
Gaçi: [laughs] Amazing!2
During the national elections the following year, Lala’s daughter Reme Lala was elected to parliament as member of a minority party. She then switched party membership to the PS and Prime Minister Rama later nominated her as director of the Social Service.
The Dibra by-elections can be seen as a general rehearsal for the parliamentary elections of June 25, 2017, where the tactic of deploying the state apparatus and criminal gangs to control the outcome of the elections was rolled out across the board.
Dossiers 339 and 339/1 of the Serious Crimes Prosecution comprise a series of wiretaps of a criminal group from Shijak headed by Astrit Avdylaj. Avdylaj had been imprisoned for a murder in 1997, but secured an early release on March 2, 2016 on account of “depression” and “suicide attempts.” After his release, he became involved in drug trafficking, forming the original reason for installing the wiretaps.
But other than providing evidence for cocaine and heroin trafficking all across Albania, the wiretaps also showed the close relations between the Avdylajs and PS politicians and officials, in particular the powerful mayor of Durrës Vangjush Dako. Dako later confirmed he had indeed been in contact with Avdylaj.3
Avdylaj was recorded telling the director of the Water Management Agency in Durrës to prepare lists of civil servants suspected of voting for the opposition so that they can be intimidated, ordering the head of the PS in Shijak to revoke business fines, and talking to voters offering bribes. The influence of Avdylaj was such that he even able to get his own candidate, PS deputy Ilir Ndraxhi, elected to Parliament.
Like Lala in Dibra, Avdylaj was keen to impress the prime minister with the voting results he delivered. As he states in one of the recordings: “We have to be very proud in front of the one high up [Rama], who should see what we are up to, you know. We will deliver him a 10 to 0 victory, and he himself will be surprised.”
Recently, Avdylaj’s name resurfaced in the so-called “Metamorfoza 3” dossier compiled by the Special Structure against Corruption and Organized Crime (SPAK).4 The dossier tells the story of two competing and collaborating criminal groups concentrated around the north of Tirana: Shijak, Lezha, and Fushë Kruja, the same area in which the electoral fraud documented in dossiers 184/2016, 339, and 339/1 above took place. The dossier recounts eighteen interconnected episodes taking place during 2020 and early 2021 involving murder, attempts at murder, intimidation, arms trade, narcotics trade, theft, illegal gambling and sports betting, and people smuggling, featuring a cast of fifty different suspects, including Avdylaj as co-conspirator of former PS deputy Arben Ndoka from Lezha as one of the leading figures.
From the dossier, it appears that Ndoka was on a quest to avenge the murder of his brother Aleksandër, who was killed in 2017. Ndoka claimed this had been done at the behest of Durim Bami, leader of a rival criminal group from the Fushë Kruja area, and he put a price of €1 million on his head. The dossier documents several assassination attempts, and in the process it sketches out the entire machinery that supported Avdylaj’s earlier effort to help Dako the region of Durrës during the 2017 elections.
The criminal groups mentioned in the Metamorfoza 3 dossier were involved both in drug cultivation and trafficking. They scope out well hidden cultivation areas, smuggle cannabis across the border with Serbian truck drivers, procure chemicals for Colombians to wash their cocaine, and are worried when a shipment of half a ton of drugs destined for Holland is seized off the Peruvian coast.
The proceeds of these activities are then invested in real estate and construction projects in order to launder the proceeds: apartment complexes, hotels, and other construction projects in which even rivals co-invest hundreds of thousands of euros. Ndoka’s son-in-law, who trafficked drugs between Italy and Albania, recounts:
I have laundered money like this… all of it… open a company in Albania… […] the taxes are very low… a construction company, brother… […] hire 6–7 workers and write invoices as if you’re doing work, declare €100,000 per year […], you lose €20,000 on taxes. (p. 61)
The impression one gets from the dossier is one of constant improvisation, paranoia, and backstabbing. These criminal groups appear not have a clear hierarchy or line of command. Leading figures deal both with minute practical details and large multinational trafficking schemes. The range of their activities, and the haphazardness with which they operate, is staggering. When one assassination attempt on Bami fails, Ndoka immediately starts spreading the rumor that one of his associates is in fact behind the attempt. Meanwhile, the whole group scrambles to find a solution for the cell phone inadvertently lost at the crime scene.
The criminal groups colluding with PS officials in electoral fraud have fully infiltrated the police forces and its chain of command as well as the special forces of RENEA and the army. Several suspects are (former) police officers: one of them was even chief of the narcotics trafficking directorate in Lezha while actively involved in cannabis cultivation; another one, former police chief in Ballsh, was found in 2023 with €113,000 in his car. In another, somewhat comical episode, one of their associates is arrested on his army base as he was test-driving a new drone. Their informants within law enforcenement tell them about wiretaps and impending anti-narcotics raids.
It is not surprising, therefore, that when police and special forces launched a special action in May 2024 to apprehend all suspects, only a handful were captured. News reports are vague on who was actually arrested, but Ndoka and Bami are allegedly both hiding in Dubai.
As I have tried to make clear above, prodiving what could only be called the top of the peak of the iceberg, we are not dealing here with what the OSCE-ODIHR mission called “mere financial support from individuals with a criminal past.” The dossiers amassed by the Albanian prosecution in various criminal investigations show a fully developed network of criminal groups that invest drug cultivation and trafficking proceeds in real estate and actively collaborate with politicians and public officials in widespread electoral fraud. And despite these voluminous files, only very few have faced justice over the years—usually those lowest in the food chain.
That “authorities should make genuine efforts to raise awareness about the long-standing phenomenon of vote-buying and the risks it poses for the integrity of the elections,” as the OSCE-ODIHR recommends in its most recent election report from 2023, is, putting it mildly, a naive statement. Because all evidence points to the simple and obvious fact that the current Albanian authorities are the ones doing the vote-buying.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan parliamentary working group is scheduled today to present the next round of electoral reform proposals ahead of the 2025 national elections, but word on the street has it that negotiations have stalled.
The Albanian Mechanism is part of Manifesto GREAT WAVE. This is the final post of this season. The Albanian Mechanism will return in September.
There were a total of 118 voting centers in Dibra, which means Lala would have controlled more than half of them. In Kastriot, where Lala allegedly controlled three voting centers, two voting centers flipped to the PS. The voting center Lala refers to specifically could be no. 1147 in Tomin, which remarkably went from a loss for the PS in 2015 of 143 votes to a loss of 13 votes in 2016, a shift of more than 25%. Most other voting centers in the Tomin area flipped to PS or remained in their hands.
In 2018, Avdylaj was arrested in 2018 on minor charges during the special operation “Volvo 4” in connection after the discovery of a drugs lab in Has. The evidence from Dossier 339 was used in the trial, even though, according to former Serious Crimes Prosecution Chief Besim Hajdarmataj, the evidence of electoral fraud had been excised. In court, Avdylaj stated: “There is no proof whatsoever that links us to drug trafficking […], you’re including politicians for no reason.” In 2021 Avdylaj was released from pretrial detention and placed under house arrest. In April 2023, the Appeals Court against Corruption and Organized Crime annulled his 12-year sentence. He was arrested again on June 29, 2024, at his home in Shijak, after warrants were issued related to the Metamorfoza 3 dossier.