Led by brothers Franc and Hajdar Copja, the Copja group stands accused of a bloody string of gangland executions and of trafficking large amounts of cocaine from South America to the European Union between 2018 and 2022.
According to the case file, the proceeds of drug trafficking were stashed away in the cramped exchange office and distributed in smaller instalments to members of the group or transferred abroad via complex schemes to guarantee cocaine payments.
Klodian Braho, a prosecutor at the Special Structure Against Corruption and Organised Crime, SPAK, said that a two-year investigation had documented the transfer of large sums of money through the Hawala system – which relies heavily on trust and personal connections – and cryptocurrency transactions.
“The investigation has proven that the individuals involved in this activity transferred money on behalf of the criminal organisation to several European countries, the United Arab Emirates, as well as to countries in Central and South America,” Braho told BIRN.
The owners of the exchange office, 55-year-old Bashkim Lika and 45-year-old Maklen Mici, were arrested in August last year on suspicion of money laundering in cooperation with a criminal organisation. Both men remain in custody but deny any wrongdoing; the investigation is ongoing.
Investigators and experts say they are not alone.
As Albanian organised crime groups have gone global, parallel systems have emerged to enable the rapid circulation of money outside official, traceable channels, often involving currency exchange businesses and money transfer agencies.
Although the scale of this phenomenon remains unclear, economic experts believe that criminal networks are exploiting legal loopholes and weak monitoring and oversight mechanisms in the foreign exchange market.
“Inspections by the Bank of Albania and tax authorities are often carried out in a formal manner… without deep analysis of the origin of the funds or transaction patterns,” said Eduart Gjokutaj, an economic consultant and head of the Tirana-based non-profit ALTAX, which promotes transparency and sustainable economic development.
“In this context, criminal actors have exploited legal gaps by registering exchange offices under the names of relatives or using separate accounts to conceal transactions, thereby avoiding direct scrutiny,” he added.
Ardian Visha, a lawyer for Lika and Mici, said his clients are innocent.
“The Special Prosecution’s suspicions are based on conjecture derived from data obtained through illegal means of evidence gathering,” he said, referring to communications retrieved from a cracked messaging app. “Moreover, this data is not presented in its authentic form, but as a selective and interpreted version prepared by the prosecuting authority.”
