At the international level

If contacts between the studied criminal core and others over the Belgian territory are well established, so are exchanges and ramifications at the international level.

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Maintaining connections with the base


First, the bounds with the homeland either in Albania or in Kosovo appear thru the numerous phone calls between the various clans and between the various criminal cores.

Concerning Sami and Zakim, it is obvious that members of their family are settled in Greece - no wonder with the number of Albanians in that country. Forming a clannish society the members of our criminal organization are thus closely related to their family - the management of criminal activities included. The "brothers" left in the Balkans seems to be the direct beneficiaries of the in Belgium accumulated bounty. The two brothers have also family acquaintances in the Bronx (USA).

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Contacts throughout Europe


The phone - tapping shows us also that the organization has members or allies in Italy just as well with Albanian and Italian thugs. The localization of them follows an itinerary conducting to France along what it seems to be the ways of clandestine immigration, going thru Bari, Rome, Milan, Savone, Vintimiglia.

In France, the localized contacts are situated in Nice, Valence and Paris along the ways used for the THB. Ideal point of this immigration end destination, Great Britain appears also thru the analysis of our suspected criminal's connections. Those are limited to Albanians in London or Kent.
Germany is also involved by frequent contacts of Sami and his cronies: they not only phone to Germany but they also go there for business ...

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Connections with prostitution networks from the East


In Aachen, the Verviers criminal core has some stakes in the prostitution business, Sami providing girls in the bars of this border region.

However it is in northern Germany, Herford and Hannover areas, where members of the criminal core go to buy, from the Russian or Polish mafia, girls coming from Ukraine and Belarus.

Sometimes, Sami himself organises their trip by rail from Belarus to Germany where they are taken over by one of his cronies and brought back to Belgium.

The organization uses also, in no small amount, the services of Lithuanian girls. It is one of the criminal core, himself married with a Lithuanian girl, who gets the girls back from Lithuania to Belgium under cover of visits to his in laws.

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And further still ...


As mentioned earlier, some phone calls are noted to the USA where Sami, Zakim and one crony have relatives: this is proof that the Albanian mafia doesn't limit itself to our continent.


Confirming these connections, recently questionings and searches have discovered, in the PC's memory of one Albanian, scanned documents from the US Immigration Service which implies that the clandestine immigration to the USA, thru false documents is also part of the organization's business.


To conclude, this account of the Verviers project shreds light on a form for the settlements of the Albanian mafia and its implantation, so much at the local, national as at the international level. A"modus operandi" that can be duplicated, with some variations, everywhere and no doubt, further afar.

More so, the dense activity of this Albanian criminal core federated into real mafias, their violence and their mobility, make them very disturbing and must push us to act rapidly.

But, busy with the fight against terrorism, the European world of the polices and the Justice doesn't really seem to worry about this threat while the evidence is there of its accruing seriousness.

All the components of an explosive cocktail are so gathered. But nobody seems ready to stop the barman from shaking it.
While ending the present paper, the conducted interventions resulted in the arrest and inculpation of 14 members of the organization including Sami and Zakim.

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