One of the most watched television programs in Chile, called Teletrece, published a report on the penetration of the Albanian mafia in this country.
“The Albanian mafia, considered one of the most dangerous criminal organizations in Europe, attempted to open a new cocaine trafficking route from Chile using former intelligence agents from that country and a sophisticated international network of illegal financing,” the well-known program emphasizes.
Nearly 20 tons of wood filled with liquid cocaine were seized at the port of Arica.
The shipment originated in Bolivia and was destined for Europe. Given the method of concealment, and the resources required to extract the drugs, if they had reached their destination, it should be immediately clear that their owners are not some small gang.
Who could be hiding behind this?
Just suspicions, but if confirmed, we would be dealing with something much bigger: the Albanian mafia operating in Chile.
It may seem funny, but the movie ‘Taken’ is probably the most prominent reference that Chileans have regarding Albanian crime. A father, a former intelligence agent, tries to recover his daughter, kidnapped in Paris by men with tattoos on their hands, who are part of one of the most dangerous criminal groups in Europe. If not the most dangerous.
The fiction is not far from reality. Albania is on the other side of the world, on the Balkan Peninsula, opposite Italy, separated by the Adriatic Sea. It is known that, according to Europol, the Albanian mafia is involved in half of the operations related to the seizure of large shipments of cocaine.
“They send delegates to Latin America, to the production areas, where they secure a relatively low long-term price, 1,500 per kilogram, and guarantee very low costs for transportation and storage before shipment to Europe. In this way, they guarantee a single and very profitable transportation price with which no other criminal organization can compete,” says Pablo Zeballos, an expert on organized crime.
The UN estimates that the Balkan route, dominated by Albanian-speaking organizations, generates illicit revenues of approximately $18 billion per year.
They have narco-music, but unlike what we are used to, their performers do not show off pistols. The music is the display of rifles, and the flagpoles are tanks. Tanks. But beyond the caricature, the Albanian criminal is very different from the national product due to a multitude of factors. Dictatorships, a forced diaspora, and a medieval code of conduct. The Kanun, which includes blood feuds between family clans, are some of them.
“The bulk of the military and police apparatus was focused on gathering intelligence for the oppression of its citizens, highly specialized in language, methods of extermination, even the logic of contamination, infiltration and so on. When that dictatorship fell, many of those people were left unemployed, weren’t they? They were left without jobs and reorganized as criminal agents,” says Zeballos.
He was one of those Albanian intelligence agents who was left unemployed in the mid-90s. His name is supposed to be Viktor Gjini, and the videos you are seeing on the screen correspond to the first time he set foot on Chilean soil.
Because of his plans in Chile – trying to open a new drug trafficking route for the Albanian mafia – he was put on trial.
Now, for the first time, you will be able to hear his voice: “He stayed with me for three days in a hotel. I am sure, as the prosecutor says, this is how photos are collected for the investigation everywhere. Where did I walk? Where did I exchange my money? Because it is normal for me to exchange money. Let’s continue. I exchanged money for food, for this, and I spent money. It is normal.”
This is the court statement of an Albanian mafia representative who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for drug trafficking after an investigation that lasted less than a month.
We will be able to hear this testimony from the prosecutor in charge.
“It’s a pretty special story. Well, it’s not just any random case,” says Carlos Ribas.
Also, the police officers who participated.
“This organization, which may have a presence here in Chile, is always connected to other individuals on the other side of the world,” says Colonel Karen Riveros.
An undercover Navy agent shared time with them. For obvious reasons, we won’t reveal any of his multiple identities, much less his face. But from the first moment, he knew he was dealing with a very different kind of criminal.
“He had quite a violent history from his past, especially from his time in Albania. That, frankly, was quite impressive.”
And he would tell you those stories?
“Yes, some of them. That’s why it’s essential that any undercover agent who infiltrates this organization has a clear understanding of the procedures, documentation, shipping routes, and basically knows the entire shipping industry.”
A mistake not only jeopardized the operation, but also the lives of those who had infiltrated a transnational criminal organization.
This happened thanks to information sent from Rotterdam, Netherlands, by the DEA itself, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.
“We are talking about a highly trained and skilled individual, Mr. Viktor Gjini. He was not just a small-time drug trafficker seeking revenge; on the contrary, he was a man who spoke four languages and knew the principalities,” says prosecutor Ribas.
“And that’s the first thing he says, I want to go to Valparaíso because I want to see how it works and what the port is like.”
We already saw their arrival in Chile; then they traveled to a hotel in the Las Condes neighborhood on April 23.
They chose it carefully, as these two Albanian citizens were looking for a place where they wouldn’t be required to provide so much documentation and where they could ideally pay for their stay in cash.
During registration, they handed over their passports, but not those of their country of birth; instead, they presented Dutch passports.
From there, they went to their rooms, where they patiently waited for the call from the man who would facilitate their drug transport from Chile to Europe. A port operator, whom they did not know. He was an undercover Navy agent.
A ticket to Valparaíso to show him that he not only knew the port, but that even there he was the master of their silence.
“They were shown the anchorages, the entrances to the harbor channels, the types of ships, their draft and the areas where the largest ships arrive. This certainly impressed them because they understood that they were dealing with someone who knew the environment. We were also able to demonstrate with documentation and have access to how we managed to carry out the operation,” says the secret agent.
A good tour, initial trust building, infiltration, control. From there, they were taken to an expensive restaurant in Valparaíso to finalize the deal.
The fictitious port operator would allow them to place 200 kg of cocaine in a container, hidden both in the pipes of the refrigerator and inside the cargo itself. For this, the Albanians had to pay a total of $200,000.
It was agreed that the first half would be paid in advance, the rest when the work was completed. But that money was not in Chile. The Chinese connection of the Albanian mafia came into play. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. It happened, didn’t it? Listen.
“Chinese citizens go to your hotel. And why do they go? To bring money, money for wine,” says Viktor Gjini.
The other voice is that of another of the convicts in this particular case, a Chinese citizen.
He says: “In my 41 years of life, I never knew what drugs were until I went to prison. That’s when I learned what drugs are.”
Did you know that this money would be used to buy drugs?
“Impossible.”
What I described could be a script for a movie, and that’s exactly what we wanted to do. To make a movie. Viktor Gjini returned to Europe and used his contacts. He needed $100,000 from the Albanian mafia to enter Chile without being detected.
To do this, he gave the money to a third party who called a Chinese citizen in Spain, who in turn contacted Chinese citizens in Chile so that they could finally hand over the sum of one million dollars to the representative of the Albanian mafia in our country.
How could they know who was who if they had never met? So, when he handed the money over to Viktor Gjini, he was given a code.
The person who welcomed him in Europe asked him to take out a banknote and took a picture of it. After that, he forced him to tear it up and keep only a piece with the serial number.
He would give that piece of paper to the Chinese when he was in Santiago as a sign of trust. This, ladies and gentlemen, is called Guajala.
“They make contact in Santiago, at the Ibis Hotel. Mr. Viktor Gjini shows him the dollar bill, he shows him the photo and it is indeed the same; the serial number matches and the money is handed over without a word being said,” the prosecutor says.
It is surprising that every piece of information that the undercover agent gave to the Navy and the Carabineros (Chilean police) materialized exactly as predicted.
Agents from both police forces never lost sight of Viktor Gjini, a member of the Albanian mafia, while he was in the country.
This required hours of surveillance, an effort that even allowed them to be present when the Chinese national arrived at the hotel to hand over the money that never left Europe but arrived in Chile.
There were no arrests at that time; they had to find the bottom of it.
In downtown Santiago, Chinese financiers were arrested. Meanwhile, in a shopping mall in the eastern part of the city, Viktor Gjini was about to meet the same fate.
The challenge is significant. The risks involved undoubtedly require greater caution. And secrecy is vital in these investigations.
The real owner of the drugs was the other Albanian citizen. Why? Because, based on international requests for information from the Netherlands, France and Belgium, this other person seemed to be closely linked to the Albanian mafia. And Viktor Gjini was the right-hand man, or the operational arm, of this first individual who was in Chile when he met the undercover agent.
The name of that Albanian citizen is Brian Dragoti. He is intensely wanted, not only in Chile, but throughout the world. All the others named in this report were convicted, making this dramatic investigation Chile’s first major blow against the Albanian mafia./ Teletrece