Albanian boys sent to join UK drug gangs

PARENTS in Albania are trafficking their teenage sons to the UK to join organised crime gangs that control large tranches of Britain’s cocaine market, an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has found.

Increasing numbers of young Albanians are being illegally smuggled into the UK with the promise of earning thousands of pounds from selling and running drugs for the gangs.

Court records show teenage Albanians, who mostly entered the UK hidden in lorries, have been prosecuted across the country, from Selkirk to Bath, Dewsbury to Shrewsbury and London to Glasgow, after being caught with drugs worth as much as £200,000.

According to the National Crime Agency (NCA), Albania is the biggest single foreign source of people trafficking into the UK, with 947 cases referred to it in 2018, a more than 50 per cent increase since 2015.

“The majority of Albanian boys and young men are trafficked with the complicity of their parents and the promise of financial remuneration by the traffickers,” said Steve Harvey, an international law enforcement specialist, who has presented his evidence to a Home Office inquiry into the problem.

“The traffickers and exploiters promise them money – a lot of money – and they promise them a job, or when the boys are minors, they promise them accommodation, or clothes, so things that they need to have,” an anonymous source told the inquiry.

Gangs promote their lifestyle to teenagers in their home country through social media. Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers, an Albanian specialist at Bournemouth University, said “blingbling” is key: “They send messages home to their peers of success featuring an abundance of money, speedy cars, women, gold necklaces and Rolex watches, also guns and power.”