One of the 6 Albanians arrested in Belgium by the international anti-drug operation conducted by the Belgian and German Police forces, was Ramazan Rraja, the nephew of the Socialist MP Rrahman Rraja. Former police officer now in exile, Emiljano Nuhu, the first to denounce publicly the son and nephews of the socialist MP Rrahman Rraja, confirmed in an interview for Syri Tv that the Rraja’s group has great political support. “At the level they have reached, for the moment it is a very powerful criminal organization that brings cocaine to Europe. This has been achieved due to the political protection they have in Albania. It is not a problem for them to bring 200 kg of cocaine to Europe,” said Nuhu. The former police officer suggested that the Rraja group will want to expand their political influence also outside Albania.
Nuhu is now in asylum because of life threats he received after denouncing the connections between the Albanian politics and the organized crime. In the interview, he confirmed that he had given general information about criminal groups and their political support to international authorities. According to him, EU police knows “quite well how Albanian institutions are connected with the criminal groups starting from the politics.” In regard to the anti-drug operation conducted by the German and Belgian police, where was arrested also Ramazan Rraja, Nuhu said that the Rraja group has its own rivals, adding that “once they’ll have space they will create very big things. They’re involved not only in the drug traffic, but also in contract killing. We will be heard especially for these types of episodes.”
Nuhu is not optimistic that Rraja’s assets, set up by criminal activity, will be verified. “I have no confidence at all, because in the top of the pyramid is Edi Rama. And SPAK won’t function. In a normal functional country, there would be enough evidence to open the case, not on assets investigation but on international trafficking […] There are indisputable evidence.”
After the finalization of the joint anti-drug operation “ATOS”, between the Albanian police, the German Police and the Belgian Police, from 2019 to 2020 around 232 kg of cocaine, a firearm and around 200 thousand euros have been seized by the authorities. The criminal group operated by loading narcotics into containers of bananas from Ecuador to Germany, hiding the narcotics in banana crates and in the containers. The containers, equipped with GPS, were followed until their arrival at the destination, and then the group would organize armed robbery to get the narcotics back. SPAK has started the investigations on the assets of the arrested citizens. Part of the investigations will be also MP Rrahman Rraja, considering his familial connections with one of the arrested members of the group.
