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Criminology professor Ervin Karamuço spoke about the SPAK operation, conducted this Tuesday, where assets worth 150 million euros were seized, 50 tons of cocaine were discovered, and 10 arrest warrants were issued.
According to Karamuço, a significant portion of the money gained from this criminal activity does not arrive directly in Albania, but is invested in various sectors, taking advantage of shortcomings in identifying their origin.
He emphasized that one of the main challenges remains verifying the source of income in cases of large investments, especially in the construction sector.
"So all this money doesn't end up here. It ends up here because we still have problems with identifying the money from the beginning, the way it is then invested, the construction permit, the source of income, we still have that and that's why the criminal code has insisted on making illicit enrichment a criminal offense."
So don't wait for the Netherlands to tell us, look, you have a group there that has been laundering money, their money, since 2020. But the moment we see for ourselves that this person is building, we immediately go and tell them where your money is, give me the invoices, where your source of income is. So that's where you prevent it and create a climate that is not encouraging for these people to come and invest anymore.
This Penal Code, which could solve some of these problems, has been delayed a bit. But now we are in a fait accompli that has really happened. Those two names who are the leaders, they have always been abroad, they have never been in Albania.
50 tons is not 150 million euros, it is much more, it is extremely much more. So these are seized from what comes out of the mortgage registers of the cadastre, so that there may be a name, a family member, something else. And it is the first phase. So you seize them and then look at them, you currently have doubts about this, so you still do not have an important proof. What money did you do this with? Because we have had other cases that we have blocked initially and he said I have been a businessman since the '90s for this story. So what?
So this is the most important moment of SPAK with all this galloping and very good work that it is doing, which managed to distinguish who is from criminal sources that has been invested and who is from legal sources, other sources. That is why businessmen are selected, because it is very difficult to separate when the illegal source begins and where is the source that you have had over the years, that you have really appeared in public registers that you are like that and have invested over time, other commercial voices and others. So this is the thing, the challenge that we have as an institution", he said on the 'Now' show on 'Euronews Albania'.
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