Just then Tig gets a call on his mobile. He mutters a few brief words before clicking it off. ‘I’m off to take my daughter to the zoo.’
And with that ‘The Consultant’ disappears back into the ‘normal’ world to take his child to a nearby zoo. I get the impression that Tig likes to stay in touch with that other side of his life.
CHAPTER 19
THE ALBANIANS’ ‘UK REP’
Foreigners – mainly eastern Europeans – are accused of more than one in four of all crimes committed in the UK. Astonishingly, they also make up nine out of ten drug suspects and are responsible for more than one in three sex offences. And according to one newspaper investigation Polish, Romanians and Lithuanians are the most likely of all foreigners to be prosecuted by the police.
The figures back up fears of an ‘immigrant crime wave’ and officials believe that it’s not helped by the ease with which so many eastern Europeans are able to get into Britain with false identities, which hide their criminal past.
But nowhere illustrates this problem more than Albania. The collapse of law and order in that country has created a criminal element even feared by the Italian Mafia. I met Albanian hash baron Ivan in the UK through an introduction from a British gangster called Jerry, who warned me in advance that Ivan was ‘a right fuckin’ nutter’. One of Jerry’s team of drug smugglers was stabbed in front of his eyes with a Samurai sword when another Albanian called Dimitri ‘got upset’ during a meeting in the Albanian port of Vlorë just a few months earlier.
Jerry explained to me: ‘They are the maddest, baddest people I’ve ever met. Step out of line and they murder you – literally,’ he says. ‘The Albanians are the ones we all fear. They’ve got a stranglehold on virtually all the hash that comes in from east of Albania. You cross them at your peril.’
He’s talking about hash smuggled from places such as India, Nepal, Afghanistan and the Lebanon. A lot of it is now primarily controlled by Albanians once it enters their country en route to the lucrative western European and US markets.
Jerry brought Ivan to a pub near Braintree, in Essex, to meet me. It’s clear from the start of our meeting that Ivan is reluctant to talk and he’s only there to keep his British friend Jerry happy. It’s a bit like treading through treacle speaking with Ivan at first, despite his fine grasp of the English language.
Initially, he just sits and listens as I make harmless small talk with Jerry. Eventually I change tactics and ask Ivan out of the blue how he got into the hash ‘game’. He says: ‘I come from a long line of smugglers in Albania. In the village where I grew up that was the only way to make money. My family controlled everything that went in and out of the area. That’s how we Albanians make our living. We charge people to bring their drugs through our territory. Why not?’
Jerry had already provided some of Ivan’s backstory, so I knew that Ivan and his gang first began dealing in hash when a team of Turks tried to avoid paying them for the rights to pass through their area of Albania. ‘We don’t like Turks much, so we asked them for a lot of money for permission to come through our area. They sneered at us and tried to avoid paying.’
The clash with the Turks ended in a bloodbath. ‘We drove the Turks out and stole their hash.’ From that moment on, Ivan and his gang began ‘taking over’ all shipments that came through from the east. ‘Ivan convinced other Turkish gangs that they should sell on the hash to him so he could then take control of it from the moment it got into Albania,’ explained Jerry, who seemed remarkably unperturbed by the Albanian way of operating.
Ivan nodded his head slowly in tacit agreement with what Jerry was saying but he still seemed reluctant to talk directly with me.
I noticed that Ivan didn’t drink alcohol. When I asked him why he said he was a Muslim. I didn’t pursue that line of questioning because it was clear he did not want to talk about religion.
So I then asked him how often he came to the UK to ‘do business’. Ivan’s reply stunned me: ‘Oh, I live here half the year. I use a different identity because I spent some time in prison in Albania and the British would not allow me in if I used my real name. I like the life here in England but I also like to be back in Albania sometimes to make sure my friends do their jobs properly.’
Ivan then proudly announced he had two girlfriends – or ‘wives’ as he called them – in the UK and two other wives back in Albania. ‘It’s perfect. Yes?’ he smiled. ‘Most men would like to have my life, I am sure.’
A few moments later, Ivan spotted an attractive woman at the bar and looked across intently in her direction. ‘But then again there is always room in my life for another woman.’
I asked Ivan how he managed to hold onto that lucrative hash route from Albania to the UK. ‘It’s not easy but I have many friends in high places, so I can always get my shipments through without any problems.’
How can you just ‘take over’ a business that travels across numerous borders and checkpoints before it even gets to the UK? ‘Oh, that is easy. As I say, we know the right people to pay to make sure the hash is delivered here without problems. It’s a good system together and most of the time it works well.’
He turns to glance up at Jerry, who’s just returned from the bar with some fresh drinks. ‘Jerry is the only man in England I trust. He is a good man.’
Jerry throws in a smile for good measure.
Ten years ago, few people knew anything about Albania. Today, its gangsters have become so notorious for violence they are said to have even given the Italian Mafia a run for their money.
In the north of Italy, the Albanians are rumoured to have taken the prostitution racket away from the country’s toughest Mafia branch, the ‘Ndrangheta. In the south, they control the drugs, guns, prostitution and human trafficking across the Adriatic and have forced an alliance with local Mafia groups. Even priests who work with women sold into sexual slavery must travel with bodyguards in case Albanian kidnappers take revenge.
UK investigators suspect the flood of hash into the country from the east is a direct result of Albanian criminals working under false identities in Britain.
Back in that Essex pub, Ivan knocks back his Coca-Cola and suggests we talk outside while he has a cigarette. It is bitterly cold but neither Jerry nor I is going to argue with Ivan.
In the pub garden, Ivan clearly feels it is safer to speak and he begins to explain in more detail about his gang. ‘We are all related. We don’t trust most outsiders. But no one fucks with us, eh Jerry?’ He continues: ‘We have the route from Albania to here airtight. Nothing gets in and out of my part of Albania without me knowing about it.’
‘But why hash?’ I ask.
‘Because more people use hash than anything else, my friend. It’s just another commodity to us. Hash. Coke. People. We will bring anything in if there is a demand for it. But hash is the biggest business, so we make sure we control it.’
Many of the British gangsters I have met down the years seemed to live in fear of Albanian mobsters like Ivan. ‘They’re animals, son,’ one old-time south London drug baron told me. ‘They shoot first and ask questions later. Horrible, cold people. They don’t work to rules. If you upset them you’re dead. Simple as that.’
So, how does the hash get in here? I ask.
Ivan’s eyes narrow. He looks across at Jerry, then takes a long drag of his cigarette. ‘I cannot tell you that then all the scum would try to steal my business.’
So I try a different tack. ‘What happens when you lose a shipment of hash?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Is it the responsibility of those who are in charge of it?’
‘Of course.’
‘Do they have to pay you back its value?’
‘Of course.’
‘And what happens if they do not pay you back?’
‘Then we don’t use them any more.’
Albania’s emergence as a chilling criminal ‘power’ has evolved since 1990. Following the collapse of the old Communist
regime, 80,000 of them turned up in Italy within months. Albanian gangs quickly branched out from ferrying their countrymen across the Adriatic. Customs officers in Puglia, Italy, say every drug smuggler they catch is Albanian, often a refugee working off the cost of their US$500 passage.
Albanian criminal gangs have developed into sophisticated – and little understood – organisations profiting from globalisation. In the mid-1990s, the Albanian Mafia even brought over hash-growing experts from other countries to help introduce the crop to Albania. Ivan claims that about one-third of the hash he now handles is grown in Albania.
‘But it’s not as good as the stuff from further east,’ he says. ‘Most of the hash we produce in Albania goes to the Albanians because it is cheaper.’
Ivan is at pains to describe Jerry as his ‘British partner’ but it becomes increasingly clear as the conversation continues that Ivan is running a vast network of hash smugglers of which Jerry is a small part.
The Albanians who first turned up in Italy in the mid-1990s were used by the Mafia to do their dirty work, the jobs that had previously been done by people under eighteen who would not be sent to jail. The Albanians were willing to kill and they just didn’t take life as seriously. They became the street dealers and the enforcers. ‘The Italians were the brains and the Albanians became their hands,’ said one expert.
I asked Ivan what would happen if the British authorities tracked him down in Albania and demanded his extradition. ‘That will never happen because I have friends in the Albanian politics who can guarantee my safety. In any case, no one in England knows my real name!’
European police and lawmakers cannot mount an effective investigation into the criminal organisations based in Albania because the justice system there is barely functioning. The UK even refuses to have any agreements with Albania because reciprocity would require that UK citizens be exposed to the Albanian court system.
There are long, awkward silences as we sit in the bitter cold while Ivan chain-smokes and carefully thinks over the answers to each of my questions. Wearing jeans and a thick leather bomber jacket topped off with a skinhead haircut, he pervades coldness and evil. Other people in the pub seem to avoid any eye contact with him – and it is easy to see how he strikes fear into his British counterparts.
Ivan takes a long and deliberate pause while he drags on his cigarette. ‘You know, my friend?’ says Ivan. ‘I do not consider myself to be a criminal. I am a businessman making money for my family. I did not make people take drugs. I am simply feeding a demand like any other business. You understand?’
I nodded and then Jerry blatantly tried to change the subject.
‘What Ivan means, old son, is that if you stitch him up he’ll come looking for you, eh?’
Ivan laughed and heartily slapped my leg. ‘Jerry is so …’ he paused. ‘Dramatic.’
With that Ivan stood up, shook both our hands and strolled out of the pub garden towards the car park. It was only then I noticed a dark BMW 5 series with two men sitting in it. They must have been there all the time.
‘I told you he wouldn’t give much away,’ said Jerry.
Half an hour later, Jerry the Essex-based ‘hash trader’, as he likes to be known, took me down to the seaside to show me how cannabis often reaches these shores. In among the brush oak stood a wildlife conservation area lying between the sea and the main road. It’s a favourite drop-off point for hash smugglers, explains Jerry.
Empty packs of cigarettes lie scattered around piles of discarded clothes and shoes. Jerry emphasises that this is not one of Ivan’s ‘operations’ but a drop-off point for other foreign smuggling gangs. ‘See these clothes?’ he says, poking a pair of women’s blue underwear with his foot. ‘There must have been a woman among them.’ The females are usually forced into prostitution to pay for their journey from Albania.
The hash-smuggling refugees, who arrive at night or early in the morning, are usually picked up by cars and vans waiting nearby.
In the past, they’ve found bodies buried in the sand of these barren, deserted beaches, casualties of the smugglers’ indifference to the lives of their clients as they often force them to swim ashore. I suspect Jerry has himself been involved in some of these ‘pick-ups’ but he talks in the third person to avoid any awkward questions.
The hash trade is a classic example of the drug industry’s globalisation, with the Turkish Mafia often trading hash to the Albanians who then use their international connections to ship it to Europe and the UK.
It’s also said that the Albanian Mafia likes to exert extra power and influence by blackmailing fellow Albanian migrants around the world. ‘The Albanian Mafia has a huge capacity to expand itself. Many times decent Albanians are obliged to help the Albanian Mafia,’ says one expert. ‘If there are no other Albanian criminals in a country, they ask for help from law-abiding Albanians and put pressure on their relatives at home, who have little or no police protection.’
Jerry looks a bit uncomfortable as we get back into his four-by-four to leave the beach area. He turns to me nervously: ‘For fuck’s sake don’t land me in the shit, will you? Those fuckin’ Albanians will cut me head off if they think I’ve grassed them up.’
CHAPTER 20
TONY THE MASTER SMUGGLER
No book about the secret criminal underworld of hash would be complete without the extraordinary story of Tony, probably the most successful full-time hash smuggler in the UK after the legendary Howard Marks. Tony is the head of a team of smugglers, renowned in the British underworld. Now aged seventy-four, Tony first started organising lorry-loads of hash from India and Afghanistan in the early 1970s. His transport company is run as a legitimate business, which on the surface deals mainly in fruit imported from these countries. But hidden beneath each shipment are millions of pounds’ worth of hash.
Tony is one of the most unlikely people you’ll ever find in the hash trade. In his youth in south-east London and Kent in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he was a member of a gang of professional bank robbers, who even teamed up with some members of the Great Train Robbery team just before they pulled off the so-called Crime of the Century in 1963. Tony was, naturally, the transport man when these blags were committed. That means he was waiting in the getaway car to drive the robbers at high speed away from the scene of their crime.
‘It was a great time back then. Robbers like us were treated like pop stars and we had the lot – wine, women and song. But I knew it was a risky business, so I kept my eyes and ears out for something else, something more secure.
‘I knew nothin’ about drugs back then. In fact they were the devil’s candy as far as me and my mates were concerned. We’d never touch an aspirin let alone a line of cocaine. We used to sneer at people who smoked pot and label them “stupid hippies” and stuff like that.’
But Tony says the turning point in his attitude towards drugs came when he served a short stretch in prison in the late 1960s. ‘That’s when I first came across the stuff. I even took a few uppers in jail to help pass the time away but I never really got really into them like a lot of other people I came across. I always preferred a pint with a whisky chaser and still do to this day.
‘But what I did realise after being in prison was that drugs were about to explode onto the streets and soon everyone would be after them. I was an opportunist and I wanted a piece of that action, so not long after I got out I put together a proposition with another villain I knew and we arranged to buy a big load of hash from the Lebanon, which was infamous for its Lebanese Gold hash back then.
‘The only problem was we had to get the stuff back from the Lebanon. We believed we were paying rock-bottom prices but we didn’t fancy being ripped off by a bunch of dodgy smugglers who’d end up skimming most of our profit in “transport fees” and probably nick half the hash for good measure.
‘So I looked into what usually got exported from Lebanon and it was oranges back then. Well, that clinched it. I’d send a lorry over to pick u
p some oranges and we’d hide the hash under them.’
Tony decided the only way to make this work properly was to create a legitimate transport company, which he officially registered and proudly had painted on the side of the Bedford truck he purchased specifically for the pick-up of hash.
‘It went like a dream. Me and my mate headed off to Lebanon by road. It was a hairy old drive through some quite dangerous areas but we never had a sniff of trouble. We picked up the oranges and the hash in Beirut and sailed back through customs in Dover without a worry in the world. I knew then and there this was a much more lucrative business than blagging could ever be.’
But back then, many of Tony’s fellow gangsters continued to disapprove of any dealing in drugs, so he was very careful not to let most of them know what he was up to. ‘Most of my crew were so anti-drugs back then I genuinely feared one of them might grass me up to the law because they would have thought I was scum to smuggle drugs, even puff.’
Tony claims he was one of the first traditional London villains to ‘convert’ to hash smuggling. ‘It was a daring move back then but the profit I made from that first ever hash deal made it the business for me. I was hooked. I’d struck gold. After all, it’s so much easier and back then the chances of being caught were virtually nil.’
Within five years, Tony’s company had grown to a dozen lorries and he was even managing to make a profit from the legitimate importation of fruit and vegetables, on top of his vast rake-offs from hash smuggling. ‘It’s funny ’cos none of my mates really cottoned on to what I was up to. They all just thought my legit transport business had hit the jackpot and that’s the way I liked to keep it back then.’
Tony genuinely feared that one of the big criminal families who dominated the London crime scene in those days might try and muscle in on his business. ‘I wasn’t stupid and I knew there were people circling my company and trying to work out how I was doing so well. But I kept on smiling and making out the fruit and veg business was booming and most of them fell for it.’
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