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The Times investigation: Albanian mafia uses military divers to hide cocaine under ships

2025-10-14 12:39:47Aktualitet SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

The Times investigation: Albanian mafia uses military divers to hide cocaine

An investigation by the prestigious British newspaper The Times has revealed new methods of how the Albanian mafia is transporting cocaine around the world. The Times article notes that the Albanians are using military divers to hide cocaine under ships, in order to make their transportation more successful. 

The Times describes in detail how drugs are transported by cargo ships. What happens is that a person dismantles the grille that covers the space below the waterline where cooling water is pumped and inserts waterproof bags containing up to 400 kg of cocaine, along with 'Apple AirTags' to track the ship.

The article also mentions the encryption platforms used by Albanian clans to communicate with each other. According to British media, around 10 different encryption systems are in use today, often created by Dutch experts.

Full Article:

The six Albanians who arrived in the small Norwegian port were equipped with diving suits and underwater sleds as if they had stepped out of a James Bond movie, but they had not gone there for an underwater vacation.

Five men and a woman had arrived in Husnes, on the west coast of Norway, to meet a cargo ship coming from Brazil. When the Nordloire arrived in port, they waited for nightfall, then one of them dove underwater to retrieve more than 150 kilograms of cocaine, hidden in a channel below the ship's waterline.

“In these operations, the ship’s crew often has no idea that their vessel is being used as a free taxi by drug traffickers,” said Leonardo Landi, an Italian police officer who helped capture the divers in 2023.

"What we have noticed is that the divers who hide cocaine on these ships in South America and then take it out to Europe are increasingly Albanians, perhaps with military training," Landi said.

This marks another drug trafficking task being taken on by Albanians, who are now involved in everything — from producing cocaine in Latin America, to brokering shipments through Ecuador, to organizing sales on the streets of Europe.

By managing every link in the business, Albanians have been able to reduce costs and eliminate competition.

“Now they offer every service related to drug trafficking,” said Landi, a colonel in Italy’s tax police who works as a narcotics liaison officer at the EU agency, Europol.

This trafficking method, called “parasite,” uses cargo ships and is growing because it avoids the need to pay bribes to crews or customs officials. All it takes is a diver to dismantle the grille that covers the space below the waterline where cooling water is pumped in — and insert waterproof bags containing up to 400kg of cocaine, along with Apple AirTags to track the ship.

“When the ship is waiting to enter a port in Europe, a team of divers returns at night, using two to four electric sleds that allow them to swim up to a kilometer away,” Landi told The Times newspaper.

“It's not easy — the ship's propellers may be spinning to keep it stable, and that's why they get paid up to 300,000 euros to get the drugs out,” he added.

The Albanian group in Norway was discovered when customs officers found underwater sled motors in the car of one of them as he entered the country before the operation.

The officers let him pass, but notified the police, who followed the group and seized the cocaine after it emerged from the water.

However, these arrests have not stopped Albanian divers from trying their luck, often in small ports where security is easier.

"That means Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom. And if they go to South America to hide the drugs, it takes them about three weeks to get there, usually flying through Mexico or Africa, to avoid radar," Landi said.

According to him, sending smaller loads to smaller ports, instead of sending entire tons of cocaine in a single container, is part of the fragmentation of the trade.

"The same phenomenon is also happening in the way traffickers communicate," he added.

Europol has been at the center of the discovery of several encrypted phone networks used by traffickers — the most notorious of them, Sky ECC, had 171,000 users when it was shut down in 2021.

Thanks to millions of messages intercepted and analyzed, arrests are still ongoing today — including 10 suspected smugglers caught in Albania in August, who were suspected of earning $40 million from shipments to Hamburg and Rotterdam.

Some of Sky ECC's users took refuge in the United Arab Emirates when they realized their conversations were no longer private, Landi said.

The last major encrypted network to be discovered was Matrix, which gave police more than 2 million messages last year.

Since then, criminals have become more cautious.

“Albanians, the Italian mafia 'Ndrangheta and South American groups now carefully control who gets encrypted phones and use several platforms at once, each with a few users,” Landi said.

“If one trafficker sends a message to a colleague through one platform, the other one replies with another phone on another platform. Even if we are monitoring one of them, we only see half of the conversation. If three people are talking, they use three platforms. With Matrix we were watching murders live — now we are more in the dark,” he added.

According to Landi, around 10 different encryption systems are in use today, often created by Dutch experts.

What is known for sure is that Albanians are now operating side by side with the 'Ndrangheta, as the Calabrian mafia — which initially used them as a labor force — has taught them the tricks of the trade.

“The 'Ndrangheta acts as a kind of guarantor for the Albanians, while the Albanians in turn keep the Italians informed about their operations,” Landi said.

"Albanians must maintain peace with the 'Ndrangheta, because now new, violent gangs are emerging in the Balkans that are eager to take their place," he concluded./Dosja.al


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