To launder money, buy and sell cocaine, or smuggle illegal immigrants to France and Great Britain, Albanian criminal groups used cryptocurrencies to hide from the eyes of the state.
These are some of the disturbing findings of the General Prosecutor's Office in last year's report: "One of the prominent trends in money laundering is the increasing use of cryptocurrencies to make payments for the purchase of significant quantities of cocaine."
The scheme is simple.
Shahin Dokuzi, an expert on the virtual currency market, explains to A2: "Because everything is done from the phone, you start the currency, you send it somewhere and no one even checks it or anything else."
Clandestine criminal groups are abandoning payments in lek, euros, pounds or dollars, replacing them with cryptocurrencies: "On the other hand, the forms of making payments have become sophisticated, including payments via cryptocurrencies, mainly in Bitcoin."
This is because control filters are missing.
Besmir Semanaj, an IT expert, says: "The lack of a legal basis and the weak institutional system mean that we have the spread of this phenomenon."
Law enforcement agencies have managed to intercept several attempts by criminal groups to use cryptocurrencies in their activities. This includes real estate, monetary values, trading quotas, and cryptocurrency portfolios with a total value of approximately 65.5 million euros.
In January, the Special Prosecution Office against Corruption and Organized Crime announced the seizure of tens of millions of euros in assets belonging to brothers Franc and Hajdar Çopja, including $10 million invested by them in cryptocurrencies. (A2 Televizion)
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