Albanian gangs are now acknowledged by police to dominate the UK drugs market, pushing out their rivals with lower prices – not to mention deadly violence.
Kingpins from the Balkan state are said to have used direct links to Colombian cartels to secure the best value cocaine, allowing them to win over British street gangs with the promise of juiced up profits.
But while this model has seen a new generation of criminals take over established organised crime groups in major cities like London and Birmingham, this is not the case everywhere.
Liverpool stands out as being one of the few areas Albanian gangsters are unable to operate, experts say – with its drug trade remaining in the hands of local criminals, often with strong links to the communities they terrorise.
This was shown by the recent conviction of young Liverpool couple Eddie Burton, 23, and Sian Banks, 25, for overseeing a £20million drug smuggling operation that brought hundreds of kilos of heroin, cocaine, and ketamine concealed in lorries from Europe to the UK.
The pair will be sentenced next week after their network was busted by officers from the National Crime Agency following Burton’s arrest by Spanish police in Ibiza’s Pacha nightclub in August 2023.
Another gang, based on the Wirral, were handed a combined 44 years in prison at the end of January for using the Royal Mail‘s postal service to send £2.7million of MDMA, ecstasy, cocaine, magic mushrooms, LSD and ketamine around the country.
The group, who included step-siblings Benjamin Crane, 35, and Abbey Crane, 24, stored their drugs in a Birkenhead storage unit, before shipping orders from a post office in a local convenience store.
Outside of Merseyside, the increasing dominance of Albanian gangs has been identified in a series of official studies – including a 2023 UN report which found that gangs from the country now ‘exert considerable control’ over the UK drugs market.
Last year, a leaked Home Office legal document described Albanian criminal gangs as an ‘acute threat’ to the UK and ‘highly prevalent across serious and organised crime’ in Britain – including several murders.
This is thought to include the murder of Rhys Thompson, 29, a young father who was abducted and beaten to death in a disturbance linked to a failed attempt to ‘tax’ a cannabis farm believed to have been run by an Albanian gang.
He was found dead with parcel tape wrapped around his neck on a moorland road in Rishworth, West Yorkshire, early in the morning of May 13, 2021. No one has ever been charged with his murder.
Research by the National Crime Agency has shown that Albanian-organised crime groups control the cocaine market across the main city and suburban areas of the UK (with the exception of Merseyside).
But the NCA says these gangsters are increasingly specialising in cannabis, which is seen as ‘very low risk’.
In 2023, the agency and 43 police forces across England and Wales targeted ‘West Balkan’ gangs seizing nearly 200,000 cannabis plants worth up to £130m, £636,000 in cash, 26 kilogrammes of cocaine worth up to £1m and 20 firearms.
So with Albanian crime lords increasing their grip across much of the UK, why have they been unable to make their presence felt in Liverpool?
Experts cited a number of reasons, including the tight grip traditionally exerted by local gangsters like Curtis Warren and the Huyton Firm over illegal shipments coming through the city’s port.
Peter Walsh, author of Drug War: The Secret History, believes another answer can be found by looking at how Balkan gangs first infiltrated Britain’s underworld.
‘The Albanians became a force in Europe during the 1990s,’ he told MailOnline. ‘My understanding is they forged links with the Colombians who were exporting cocaine to Europe through major shipping lanes.
‘By negotiating directly with the suppliers the Albanians were able to bypass the more established gangs in Europe. But crucially they sold the drugs at lower price points than existing crime groups, which gave them a crucial advantage.
‘The Albanians thrived in Greater London, which was already racially diverse. They then expanded into the home counties and toward Birmingham.
‘I just think Merseyside has remained outside their reach for a combination of factors that have worked against them.
‘The first is that Liverpool is such a local, clan based city. The supply of drugs in Liverpool has always been dominated by well established crime groups who have strong links across communities.’
Despite their reputation for savage reprisals against criminal rivals, Mr Walsh thinks the Albanians’ business model was based on price competition – rather than the violence typically associated with drug gangs.
‘The thought of Albanians looking to undercut local Liverpool crime gangs in nightclubs or on housing estates is ridiculous,’ Mr Walsh said.
‘The first point is that they would not have been able to blend into the community in the way it was possible to do so in London and Birmingham.
‘Members of local communities affiliated to drug gangs would have reported their activities to the police, and then after that they would have been met with serious violence.
‘Liverpool is a city that outside crime groups are reluctant to enter for fear of violence.’
A former detective who served at Scotland Yard for decades told MailOnline that Albanian drug gangs became an issue in the early 2000s.
The former senior detective chief superintendent, who asked not be named, said: ‘The FBI came to Scotland Yard to warn us of the particular threat posed to the UK by Albanian crime groups.
‘The US officials told us that the Albanians were prepared to use a ferocious level of violence not previously seen in the UK.
‘We later had meetings with officials from MI6 (known as six to coppers) to discuss this threat. It was clear then that the Albanians were proficient in the smuggling of people, drugs and firearms.’
The former detectives claimed that many Albanian gangsters entered the UK by claiming to be seeking asylum from the Yugoslavian war before building up a power base around the West London neighbourhood of Hounslow near Heathrow Airport.
‘Albanians would enter the UK to carry out revenge killings – an Albanian man working as a taxi driver in the Hove area was stabbed to death by one of these hit teams,’ he said.
‘The killers then tried to flee the UK but my team managed to snare them just in time. I would describe the Albanian crime groups we dealt with as particularly nasty and vicious.’
Despite failing to break into Liverpool, he said Albanian gangs had now spread their tentacles to other countries as far away as Australia.
A Liverpool man with experience of its underworld cited several other characteristics of the city’s drug scene has made it particularly hard for outsiders to penetrate.
He told MailOnline: ‘The nightclub security scene in Liverpool used to be heavily linked to the drug trade.
‘Door teams would control the sale of drugs in clubs and bars, to put it simply. But the bouncers were all local and knew the club owners. Yes you had the odd fall-out but things were sorted out in the end.
‘The second point is the Port of Liverpool. Curtis Warren and then the Huyton firm have always controlled what comes in through the port.
‘Again the Albanians have no influence here, so they can’t penetrate the market. The only chance for Albanians in Liverpool is for a small firm to come for the weekend, sell pills in a few clubs and then get out on the Monday.’
