Torpedo: The Double Life of an Accused US-Albanian Drug Trafficker

Drug trafficking is the chief source of 'dirty money' penetrating Albania's meagre economy, according to authorities, helping to finance political corruption, sway elections and win protection from prosecution.

But while a six-year investigation in the US resulted in Didani's arrest on April 1 in North Carolina, prosecutors in his native Albania dropped a probe in 2018 into suspicious bank transfers of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The case was handled by Alket Mersini of the Tirana Prosecutor's Office, who was dismissed in December last year by an independent body created to weed out corrupt judges and prosecutors, ruling that Mersini had failed to explain the origin of his wealth.

Reached by phone, Mersini told BIRN: "I don't remember the case. I'm taking some time off."

A lawyer representing Didani could not be reached for comment.

'That's ur house'

753-kilogram of cocaine seized on August 11, 2019, at the Port of Rotterdam onboard the MSC vessel Anisha R. Photo: US Court Documents

The DEA says Didani headed an organisation dealing in "large-scale cocaine trafficking and money laundering", which designed an amphibious drone for the trafficking of cocaine from South America to Europe and had financing from Michigan telecommunications CEO Marty Tibbitts, until Tibbitts died when he crashed his Cold War-era RAF fighter jet in Wisconsin in 2018.

Just in the last two years, authorities in the US and Europe seized nearly 3.5 tonnes of cocaine allegedly trafficked by Didani's group from South America to Bilbao in Spain, the Dutch port of Rotterdam and Belgium's Antwerp.

He now faces charges of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, conspiracy to distribute controlled substances on...

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