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'The Sun' INVESTIGATION: Crime money is distorting the financial market in Albania!

2025-09-27 12:24:56Aktualitet SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

'The Sun' INVESTIGATION: Crime money is distorting the financial

By Grace Macaskill,  The Sun

On top of an Albanian hill, a restaurant stands majestically, surrounded by olive groves and grape vines.

At the end of a long, winding road carved into the rugged mountain terrain, Solis Farm is not only a popular tourist attraction, but also an extraordinary feat of engineering.

Just 20 minutes away from the capital, Tirana, it offers an incomparable panoramic view.

But despite the remote location, when The Sun visited last week, security seemed unusually tight for a family restaurant and CCTV cameras were positioned along the steep road leading there.

It's no wonder when you consider that this multi-million pound enterprise is said to have been built on the misery brought about by the uncontrolled drug trade in Britain.

Two thousand miles away from Albania, the two drug lord brothers behind this complex ran their Europe-wide operation from a much less luxurious location: a terraced house in London.

In a typical two-story house in the Tottenham neighborhood, Franc Çopja was never separated from his telephone, commanding an "army" of generals who followed his every order, causing misery, chaos, and murder.

He spent his days contacting drug traffickers in South America, before arranging payments to corrupt customs officers and port workers who helped smuggle millions of pounds of cocaine into Britain, much of it hidden in trailers.

With more Britons than ever using cocaine, and prices in the UK twice as high as on the continent, Çopja and his equally infamous brother, Hajdari, had monopolized the market.

But everything came crashing down when 50kg of cocaine disappeared before reaching their hideout in Tottenham, sparking a bloody gang war.

Triple execution

The drug shortage led to a conflict with a rival Albanian gang that left four dead, including an enemy killed in a broad daylight assassination that shocked Belgium.

Franc Çopja, 33, fled London to Dubai after the murder and was extradited to Belgium in 2023.

Fearing for his brother's fate, Hajdari, 40, is believed to be on the run from Dubai, where he was living near Franc in a villa. Various sources indicate that he may be hiding with his drug trafficking contacts in South America.

The brothers are wanted for three murders and international drug trafficking in their home country — and the prosecution's key witness is a rival gang member who has shed light on how they operated in the United Kingdom.

A source told us: "It's something really explosive. Never before has it been so clearly revealed how Albanian gangs manage their activity in Britain. They paid off officials at the ports and made millions. They laundered the dirty money in Albania through 'respectable' businesses, but now their empire is on the verge of collapse."

In Albania, special anti-corruption prosecutors from the structure known as SPAK have seized the assets of the brothers, who had become so powerful that they dictated the price of cocaine across Europe.

They include £10 million in cryptocurrencies, land, villas, companies and bank accounts.

We were able to discover that among the seized assets is Solis Farm in the village of Baldushk. When we went to see the restaurant, there was only a luxury Mercedes outside, which was being guarded by a “guardian.”

Local residents indicated that they have been hired to take care of the vast olive fields, while the untouched grapes are rotting on the vine.

A few minutes' drive away, in the Albanian capital, four luxury apartments, believed to belong to the brothers, have also been seized.

There, wealthy residents with sports cars enjoy the luxury of a shared swimming pool, while Albanian, British and American flags fly on poles.

What is even more shocking is the fact that the brothers were acting openly in front of the authorities, investing their money in a villa called Gjuta, just 500 meters from the office of the country's prime minister, Edi Rama.

Authorities say everything the brothers own will be confiscated by the state and then sold at auction if they are found guilty.

They began their criminal careers in the so-called gang city – Elbasan, a city in central Albania known for violence.

According to SPAK prosecutors, the brothers started small-scale drug trafficking in Italy in 2006, but soon expanded their activity to Belgium, the Netherlands and then to Britain, where they settled in Tottenham.

They allegedly paid port workers to let trucks and trailers filled with drugs pass through unchecked.

SPAK prosecutors, Altin Dumani and Vladimir Mara, said of the gang: "It had the capacity to directly influence the price of cocaine on European markets and to manage large quantities of narcotics in very short periods."

Bullet hail

But the Çopja brothers' fortunes began to decline after Franci moved to Britain and 50 kg of cocaine disappeared.

This led to an open conflict with the rival Alibey family, as each side blamed the other for the drug theft.

According to Albanian prosecutors, the brothers took revenge with a triple execution.

Endrit Alibej, Arben Dylgjeri and Turkish citizen Erdal Durunay were killed inside their Range Rover when they were shot at with a barrage of bullets from Kalashnikovs in the village of Bradashesh, in central Albania, in 2018.

SPAK also believes that Franc Çopja is the person behind the contract killing of the head of the Alibej clan, Ardi Spahiu, in Belgium.

In a crime that shocked the country, Spahiu had just left a cafe in November 2020 when he was executed with 18 bullets, eight of which hit him.

The brothers are said to have subsequently participated in 14 other assassinations, carried out or attempted, against rivals, according to Albanian officials.

As the number of victims grew, some members of the Alibej gang decided to cooperate with justice, and the brother of the murdered victim, Endrit Alibej, is now the key witness in the case against the Çopjaves.

Erion Alibej told an Albanian court how he was recruited by the pair to travel to London after his older brother, Endriti, owed them money for drugs.

Alibej, who was smuggled into London in the back of a truck, described how the entire Çopjave drug operation was run by Franci from a house in Tottenham, while Hajdari handled the logistics from Albania.

He said: "I insisted on going to England to work because Endrit had debts and I wanted to help him pay them off. I went by truck."

"In England I went to the house of Franz Çopja, who lived in Tottenham, and he checked everything over the phone. At first I stayed with an uncle, because he had an idea of ​​what kind of work I would do. I was able to secure supplies and sell cocaine, but I had difficulty getting back home. Hajdar Çopja was a very safe drug transporter with horse-drawn trailers, starting from Germany, and all the way to Belgium and the Netherlands. I managed to pay off a very large debt that Endriti had at the time. I did a good and great job, so much so that I attracted attention."

Held hostage

He described the operation in London as a "time of crisis" after police seized a shipment of drugs hidden in a horse trailer.

According to sources, although the brothers had so much money that they could afford to lose one in three drug shipments, they were furious when 50kg of cocaine disappeared before it reached London.

Alibej told a court in Albania that the courier who had lost his shipment was held hostage for two weeks and brutally beaten until he was covered in cuts and bruises.

The Çopjav criminal empire collapsed after police intervened in the encrypted messaging app "Sky ECC" in 2021, which the brothers used to exchange hundreds of secret messages.

According to Europol, the encrypted communications revealed shocking details of murders and attempted murders, as well as photos and videos of torture.

Franc Çopja worked closely with fellow Albanian gangster Ervis Çela, 41, one of the most ruthless figures in the cocaine trade who allegedly smuggled 28 tons of cocaine from Paraguay to Antwerp and Hamburg between 2020 and 2021.

The drugs were discovered hidden in soap boxes, paint cans and industrial adhesives.

Çela was wanted in Italy for the torture and murder of a rival when he was arrested in Albania in June of this year.

The British drug market is extremely lucrative — a kilogram of cocaine is worth around £40,000, compared to around £20,000 in Europe.

According to a report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2023, Britain is the largest consumer of cocaine per capita in Europe and second in the world after Australia.

Meanwhile, in Albania, criminal gangs are injecting large amounts of money into the economy, distorting the financial market, according to an expert.

Zef Preçi, director of the Albanian Center for Economic Research, said: “ Organized crime groups in Albania have significantly increased their wealth and are using every means to introduce it into the country’s economy through money laundering schemes. While globally such illicit funds constitute an average of 2–5% of GDP, in Albania the level is believed to be significantly higher .”

The Çopja–Çela gang had so much money that they couldn't launder it fast enough.

Coded messages show that Ervis Çela had even suggested that euros be buried in Albania under the roots of olive trees, just as they are in the giant restaurant complex of Çopjave.


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