TIRANA, July 11 – A leading commercial bank has been robbed at gunpoint in the central square of the southern city of Vlora just few days after a spectacular theft at the security area of the country’s sole international airport, once again raising security concerns.
Two unidentified armed and masked men managed to break into the Vlora branch of the Turkish-owned BKT bank and rob at gunpoint the daily turnover, facing no resistance by private guards and the police.
The same bank branch, situated at the landmark Flag Square, where Albania proclaimed its independence in the early 20th century, has also been previously robbed at gunpoint.
The bank’s robbery is the second in a couple of weeks after a Euro 1 million heist at the international airport just outside Tirana, where money being taken to a plane on behalf of a commercial bank, apparently Raiffeisen Bank, was robbed at gunpoint from an armored vehicle.
It was the third time in the past 18 months huge amounts of money being transported by security companies on behalf of local commercial banks was spectacularly stolen in broad daylight in downtown Tirana and just outside the capital with the perpetrators unidentified in all cases.
Opposition Democratic Party leader Lulzim Basha described the latest robbery of the bank in Vlora, which he said is the fourth in the past one and a half years, as the collapse of rule of law.
“The rule of law and public security have collapsed. Criminals are today safer than ever because crime has captured the only body which fights it back, the government, the interior minister and the most incriminated police heads in the past 25 years,” said Basha.
“It is not only the millions of euros that are vanishing every day, but what’s graver is the robbery of every security standard,” he added.
