Smuggling continues in Albania - now as organized crime
Cigarettes are smuggled from Albania to neighbour countries.
By Bashkim Shala, Peja and Prizren in Kosovo, Kukes and Shkodra in Albania
Posted on December 22nd, 2009
Mules and horses smuggling cigarettes through mountain paths along the border between Montenegro and Kosovo are not the truckloads of cigarettes swarming Peja after the end of the 1999 war.
But smuggling continues with the animals or vans, and a local prosecutor says that a 2007 bust of 15 tons of cigarettes in the region, show it is a work of organized crime. Some cigarettes enter Albania.
About a tenth of the cigarettes entering Kosovo are smuggled, according to the customs, though they add that most of it comes from the unguarded border with Serbia. The size of smuggling into Albania itself is hard to find, though official cigarette consumption in Albania equals that of Kosovo, despite the population being a third higher.
Cigarettes are smuggled from Albania into the southern Kosovo region of Prizren, again with mules. Kosovo and Albania police say they have failed to arrest smugglers in this area, though they had found carriage animals with cigarettes, and several operations have failed. One policeman is quoted saying that he suspects that smugglers and some policemen work together.
Smuggling happens also along Albania’s border with Montenegro, both along the Skadar Lake, and the mountains that Albania shares with that country, police admit.
The original article was published in two different media: in the newspaper Koha Ditore, based in Prishtina on May 20th 2009 and on August 24th in Courrier des Balkans, an Internet news service.
To read the whole story in Albanian, please click here.
