FLASH
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Albanian structured criminal groups are directing their activity towards West Africa, particularly using Senegal as a new corridor for drug trafficking towards Europe.
According to security expert Fatjon Softa, this shift comes as a result of increased controls on traditional traffic routes.
He emphasizes that institutional weakness and the high level of corruption in the region, as well as poor cargo control at the port of Dakar, create favorable terrain for criminal networks.
According to Softa, the decrease in the amount of drugs seized in Albania is related to changes in routes and not to a decrease in traffic.
Meanwhile, Albania remains a major money laundering hub, with investments in construction, real estate and tourism. He also warns of the potential for these groups to infiltrate other sectors, including food security, as well as political influence and the justice system.
"This information that came as a result of a foreign media, which speaks and writes about the weight and role of structured Albanian groups, who operate outside the territory, even from Senegal, using it as a passage corridor, and those, about whom they speak, who control those political activities or the activities of the judiciary, shows once again the weight and power of these groups, at least financially and secondly in political connections, because nothing can operate only from a financial point of view, if there are no political connections and political support. Of course, even in Albanian territory, these groups continue to have and use the territory for this type of communication, because communication is not telephone, communication is financial, communication is also political, because the fact that they exercise such activities and use the passage of these channels already from Senegal, from Latin America towards the territory, shows once again the weight and power that they have.
In Albanian territory, of course, more than drugs, it is money laundering, because drugs will end up in money laundering and money laundering comes on the basis of a power that they have, whether from a political point of view, of local government or in the judiciary, because joint operations have shown connections of groups with these structures, who come not only for simply entering the territory, distribution, trafficking, but also for laundering money that has come through construction, through real estate agencies or through tourism. It has been said that it is dangerous, because these groups have also entered food security. They have entered production and this has become even more dangerous because it directly attacks the health of Albanian citizens.
West Africa is now a new criminal corridor, where the conveniences that come due to its position across the Atlantic, across the Mediterranean, using the Balkans as a passageway to reach European Union countries, the conveniences that it has to connect directly through Belgium, Spain and France, have made it important also due to the high level of corruption in these countries.
"So focusing on the Balkan area, using this area, because there are levels of corruption in the countries of the Balkan area and this type of level of corruption has favored them for a long time and years to build their empire of trafficking in hard drugs, mainly narcotics. And this is a corridor not only for simply trafficking in narcotics, but also a way for them to launder money and then return the money through informal businesses or through the construction line or other forms to turn these into an economy, where their economy then ends up in the control of state structures, turning these into a function of their criminal activity ," he told "Syri TV".
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