How to See the Forest for the Pigs
Whenever Prime Minister Edi Rama is confronted with the remarkably close ties between his political affiliates and the international drug trade, he responds with dismissal and disavowal. Most recently, the Italian public broadcaster Rai3 transmitted two episodes of its investigative program Report, diving into the migrant deal between Albania and Italy. Their rather damaging investigation revealed connections between the Albanian government and organized crime, which in turn cast doubt onto the eventual destination of Italian taxpayers’ money.
The most recent episode, which aired on June 2, featured former Deputy Prime Minister Arben Ahmetaj, currently in exile in Switzerland, making the explosive claim that Prime Minister Rama had met “nearly all … mafia bosses” inside his offices. When confronted with this accusation by one of the Italian journalists, Rama responded by suggesting Ahmetaj must be feeling the heat of justice: “We have a saying in Albanian: Every forest has its pigs.”
“Every forest has its pigs.” This is a beloved saying of the prime minister, who uses it at many different occasions: when attacking the opposition; when warning citizens for corruption in hospitals; when defending his regional political allies. Below, I focus on its most frequent usage, namely as referring to corrupt politicians – the “pigs” in question. Let’s look at some of those that have roamed over the years in Prime Minister Edi Rama’s forest – his government and party – at remarkably high positions, and their connections to the world of crime.
We start with former Minister of Interior Affairs Saimir Tahiri. I got my first look at him enforcing the crowds during the deadly opposition protests of January 21, 2011, a few weeks after I had moved to Albania. In charge for the electoral district of Tirana, he was rewarded with an important ministerial post in Prime Minister Rama’s first government after the electoral victory of the Socialist Party (PS) in 2013.
Tahiri’s main link to international drug trafficking came to the fore in the so-called Habilaj Affair. The beginnings of the Habilaj Affair date back to 2015, when the then former Anti-Drugs Police Chief of Fier, Dritan Zagani, gave a TV interview revealing family links between Minister Tahiri and an international drug trafficking network run by the three Habilaj brothers, which “had become very powerful in Vlora after the [2013] elections.” In particular, Zagani claimed that the Habilajs had used a motorized rubber boat and an Audi A8, both registered under Tahiri’s name, for criminal activities. Zagani further claimed that the Habilajs had direct influence on nominations at police directorates, which fell under the responsibility of Tahiri’s ministry. Rather than receiving protection as a whistleblower, Zagani was accused of leaking sensitive information. During a speech at the event “Anti-drugs 2014–2015: A Success Story,” Prime Minister Rama referred to him as follows:
A criminal, one of those that the reborn State Police has had the courage to identify in its own ranks and to purge, a collaborator of drug traffickers who leaked police operations.
However, Zagani, now living in exile in Switzerland, was fully vindicated when October 2017 the Guardia di Finanza of Catania arrested one of the brothers, Moisi Habilaj, in a large anti-drugs operation, confirming in the process the intimate links between the Habilajs and Tahiri, who was mentioned in one of the wiretaps as the recipient of €30,000. Failing to apologize to Zagani, Prime Minister Rama publicly responded to the whole affair with disbelief:
What has come out of the talks of two criminals is disgusting and shocking! I have known Saimir Tahiri for years and I have had only supporting and encouraging words for him, as a person with good aims, ability, and integrity.
Tahiri’s “integrity” notwithstanding, the Audi A8 was confirmed to be his, and his boating licenses (together with €863,000) turned up in the car of a 25-year-old businessman whose company had won a tender to renovate the police commissariat in Tahiri’s electoral district. When asked about corrupt politicians during a press conference at the end of the year, the prime minister quipped, “There is no forest without pigs.”
The Serious Crimes Prosecution started an investigation, and Tahiri eventually – after international pressure – gave up his parliamentary mandate in May 2018, thus opening the way for his arrest. In February 2022, the Appeals Court against Corruption and Organized Crime sentenced him to an abbreviated prison term of 3 years and 4 months for abuse of office. The charges involving international drug trafficking and membership of a structured criminal organization had by then all been dropped. Tahiri was released early in June 2023 for health reasons.
We now come to Fatmir Xhafaj,1 who replaced Tahiri as Minister of Interior Affairs a few months before the arrest of Moisi Habilaj, in March 2017. In a previous life, Xhafaj had been a part of the communist nomenklatura, both as secretary of the Central Committee of the Youth Union of the Party of Labor of Albania (PPSh), and investigator in Kruja publicly accused of torture. But since 2014 he had been Chair of the Parliamentary Judicial Reform Committee for the PS. As one of the key figures in the early days of the Justice Reform he was, despite being responsible for several questionable maneuvers, considered a close ally by the EU and US and thus a safe choice to restore their faith in Rama’s government.
There was, however, one complication: Fatmir Xhafaj’s brother Agron had been convicted in absentia by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation for international drug trafficking between South America and Italy. While Xhafaj was obviously not accountable for his brother’s actions, as nominal head of the State Police he was responsible for the execution of any international arrest warrant and bringing him to justice. Instead, it appeared Xhafaj initiated changes in the Criminal Procedure Code safeguarding Albanian nationals from extradition after being tried in absentia.
In May 2018, the opposition provided evidence that Agron Xhafaj resided in Albania and continued to be involved in drug trafficking out of Vlora. When it turned out that despite his conviction his name was the only one of his criminal group that had surprisingly not ended up on Interpol’s list of wanted persons and that Italy had never issued an international arrest warrant, he turned himself in to the Italian authorities to save his brother’s credibility. But the internationals increasingly called for Xhafaj’s departure, and he resigned in October of the same year.
Besides these two Ministers of Interior, there is a plethora of other officials from Rama’s party implicated in crime. First the mayors: Former Mayor of Durrës Vangjush Dako, who personally secured the early release of Lulzim Berisha, leader of the “Durrës Gang,” ahead of the 2017 elections and appeared in wiretaps of the Kosovar prosecution as facilitating tenders to criminal groups in exchange for votes (more on which below). Some low-level functionaries were convicted in the vote-rigging case while Dako has so far escaped justice. Former Mayor-Elect of Shkodra Valdrin Pjetri had to resign after a former Italian conviction for drug dealing was revealed. Former Mayor of Kavaja Elvis Rroshi was eventually removed after it was revealed he was sentenced in Italy for attempt at group rape, drug trafficking, and money laundering, but not before appropriating lucrative beachside property for his family. The Mayor of Rrogozhina, Edison Memolla, is under investigation for election fraud and money laundering. And last but not least, Mayor of Tirana Erion Veliaj is feeling the heat of multiple SPAK investigations into corruption affairs linking back to organized crime.
The parliamentary group of the PS fares no better. Former deputy Arben Ndoka resigned in 2015 after it was revealed he had been convicted for human trafficking in Italy. He was later arrested together with former deputy Arben Çuko as part of a criminal organization. While Çuko was not convicted, the Special Stucture against Corruption and Organized Crime (SPAK) recently released an arrest warrant for Ndoka in another case involving several murders. Former deputies Mark Frroku and Arben Doshi (who provided the important service of “flipping” the north to the PS) were involved in a murder plot. Former deputy Armando Prenga resigned after it was discovered he had an Italian conviction for robbery and falsifying documents.
If we expand our view to family connections, as in the case of Tahiri’s cousins and Xhafaj’s brother, the list becomes exponentially longer. The tip of the iceberg: The brother of deputy and former Deputy Minister of Justice Arben Isaraj was arrested for drug trafficking. The brother of Petrit Fusha, who used to be one of the most powerful prosecutors in the country and related to one of the wealthiest construction oligarchs, was also involved in drug trafficking, laundering money through real estate projects in Albania. The son of former deputy Rrahman Rraja, Rexhep Rraja was arrested for sexual violence while his grandson is currently on trial for attempted murder of a prosecutor investigating his drug trafficking activities and being part of a criminal organization, for which he was already convicted in Belgium.
And then we have former deputy Artan Gaçi, the husband of deputy and former Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs Olta Xhaçka, currently implicated in the SPAK case against Mayor of Himara Jorgo Goro, who illegally privatized public beachside property for development by Gaçi’s company as a so-called “strategic investment.” According to the Italian investigations referred to earlier, Gaçi had been intercepted discussing voting buying with Ymer Lala, a crime boss from Dibra and father of former deputy Reme Lala, in connection to a sprawling electoral fraud scandal first made public by the German daily Bild in 2019.
At this point it becomes legitimate to ask: Can we see the forest for the pigs? Is it really possible for a person to occupy the position of prime minister and party leader for more than a decade and be fully unaware of the myriads of links between his ministers, party functionaries, and their family members with drug trafficking and organized?
Indeed, Ahmetaj’s accusation comes at a time that Prime Minister Rama himself is increasingly implicated in the networks that his underlings were connected to. Recent accusations of the opposition link the prime minister’s brother, Olsi, to a criminal group managing a cocaine lab that was discovered in Xibraka in 2014. Documents from the Total Information Management System (TIMS) show that Olsi had used the same car as one of the convicted criminals, Ermal Hoxha, the grandson of the former communist dictator Enver Hoxha. The parallel with Tahiri’s case is striking.
Last month, Belgian media reported that the name of the prime minister was mentioned in the so-called “Black Eagle” dossier, involving the laundering of millions of euros in cocaine traffic proceeds through Albanian investments. And last week, his name surfaced in the sprawling corruption scandal around the former Deputy Director of the Romanian Intelligence Service, General Florian Coldea, who allegedly facilitated drug trafficking from the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel to Romania by way of Albania. Caldea has been (and may still be) consulting as Prime Minister Rama’s External Adviser for Security, which in turn has caused concern with the Romanian government.
“We are used to these variety shows and we have no concern about the nonsense that connects Mr. Coldea’s role as an external adviser with the Mexican soap opera of Tirana’s political and media sewage channel that has recently been poured into the Romanian media cup as well.”
– Prime Minister Edi Rama in response to questions of BIRN, June 14, 2024.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Rama seeks the occasional escape from the grim political reality of his forest. The “Park of Eden,” an “open and permeable structure for private leisure” that he built inside the courtyard of the Prime Ministry, is nearing completion. And in the week after the most recent Report emission he left for Paris, where he had arranged a solo show with his gallery Marian Goodman at their Paris satellite location. The motto of the exhibition, “Politics is the battle of everyday life. And art is like a prayer,” was Rama’s own. Considering his increasingly well attested affiliations with those running the “narco” of the narco-state, it may well be that, once it becomes fully evident that he has managed to remodel the Socialist Party wholesale into a structured criminal organization, prayers are no longer sufficient.
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