Minister says Albania is winning battle with organized crime

TIRANA, May 14 – In an interview to an international news agency Interior Minister Bujar Nishani said that Albania has dismantled its main criminal organizations and cut their political links, but “the battle has not been won.”
“We have succeeded in cutting the mafia’s links with the political world and dismantling gangs,” Nishani told the AFP. “Albanian criminal organizations have been indicted with murder, and the trafficking of drugs, weapons and humans.”
Since 2005, at least 900 people belonging to 204 criminal organizations have been arrested and have faced justice in Albania, while various probes were opened into mafia connections to politics and police. But Nishani admitted he “cannot say that the battle has been won,” adding: “There are always attempts to use Albania as a transit point for narcotics or other trafficking.”