Western Balkan Organised Crime at European Union

The Albanian Mafia - does it pose a real threat?

Abstract

This  article  deals  with  the  research  question  of  whether  Albanian-speaking  organised  crime poses a real threat to the security of the European Union (EU). We analyse the dan-ger  of  Albanian-speaking  criminal  organisations  in  the  Balkans,  Europe  and  elsewhere.  Based on a wide range of criminal investigations, this innovative report looks forward to providing up-to-date data on police operations carried out by Europol and making the fight against these criminal groups’ relevant scenes visible.The methodology is based on two aspects. On the one hand, the study of the essential characteristics of these criminal groups is based on the latest studies made public in the academic sector. This will help us to understand criminal networks in detail, overlapping the  core  criminal  activities  and  markets.  On  the  other  hand,  the  key  police  operations  and international actions carried out during this period were studied based on Europol’s open access reports involving Europol News Press Release. The current situation was estab-lished on the evidence released from 2018 to 2021.Analysis of these data has revealed the volume and scale of operations. Also, the geographical scope of the main criminal activities of the Balkan Organisations, especially the Albanian Ma-fia.  All  this  shows  that  we  are  dealing  with  unique  criminal  organisations.  This  is  so  not  only  because  of  their  sui  generis  characteristics  but  also  because  of  their  criminal  activity,  which  makes them extremely difficult to combat by law enforcement agencies.