Eurasia Press & News
Court documents detail claims of how an alleged drug boss living in Dubai laundered money in his native Albania, helping to fuel a rapid rise in real estate prices.
In September 2020, Klajdi Merkaj was getting ready to travel to Dubai with the intention of securing new funds for his construction business in the Albanian capital, Tirana.
Just 31 years old, Merkaj was building a complex of luxury villas in Lundra, a popular zone for gated communities some 15 kilometres south of the city – but he harboured even bigger ambitions.
With his eye on two parcels of land in Tirana, Merkaj turned to Dubai-based Franc Copja, an alleged drug-trafficking boss better known as Franc Gergely. Merkaj had no idea, however, that their negotiations over a 1.5 million-euro cash ‘investment’ would be discovered by investigators who cracked the encrypted Sky ECC communications application that Copja – and a host of criminals across the continent – used to conduct their business.
In one message to Copja, Merkaj said he had received “the OK” from “higher up” to buy the two locations.
Their communications are part of a voluminous decision on July 29 by Albania’s Special Court Against Corruption and Organised Crime charging the Copja brothers – Franc and Hajdar – with seven murders, two attempted murders and other crimes linked to drug trafficking and money laundering. Thirty others have been charged with other crimes, including two police officers accused of supplying the group with information on its rivals.
The file details a violent war with a rival group that resulted in more than a dozen deaths; the claim that Copja was offering five million euros for the murder of the leader of the rival gang shows the enormous resources at his disposal.
The part pertaining to Merkaj, meanwhile, lifts the lid on the money laundering that has fuelled a construction industry boom in Tirana, as well as other big cities up and down the Balkans, sending real estate prices sky-high.
On the run
Dubai has become a haven for crime bosses, including those wanted in Albania.
When Copja was extradited to Belgium in December 2023 to face murder charges, Belgian media reported it as unprecedented. Some 20 alleged criminals sought by Belgium are currently living in Dubai.
Albanian investigators believe Copja was a ghost investor in property developments and the luxury car trade in Albania as a way to launder the proceeds of drug trafficking.
In 2020, investigators allege Copja was behind at least 7.5 million euros that entered Albania as investment in the construction of a new apartment block and a number of other real estate purchases, including in Lundra, where Merkaj’s company built a complex of villas in a development called Mandarine Drive.
“Among those arrested features a prominent money launderer based in Tirana, who provided his services to several other top-level criminal groups engaged at an international level in murders, corruption and large-scale drug trafficking, among other criminal activities,” Interpol said in a press release on August 1.
Merkaj is currently on the run. His brother, Endri, who officially owns the construction company, did not respond to a request for comment.
Operations in the Netherlands, Belgium and Britain
The crime enterprise allegedly led by 32-year-old Copja and his 40-year-old brother has its roots in Elbasan, a town in central Albania known as the home of a number of very violent criminal organisations.
It began with small-scale drug deals in Italy n 2006-2007, investigators believe.
“Over the years, the Copja Brothers were strengthened and their operation expanded into other European countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom,” prosecutors said.
By 2020, the organisation had allegedly nurtured direct connections with cocaine producers in Latin America, with Copja believed able to strike deals in countries as far away as India and South Africa.
According to the charges, the group killed seven members of the rival Alibej group between 2018 and 2020 and tried but failed to kill two more, using a network of contract killers. The Copja brothers paid informants to track their targets’ movements and others to dismantle the cars used in the hits, prosecutors said.
Fearing for their lives, some in the Alibej group decided to turn state witness, admitting to a number of murders but also spilling the beans on their adversaries, including details of their real estate investments.
In July, the Copja group was hit by Albanian investigators working with Europol as well as law enforcement bodies in Belgium, the Netherlands and France in an operation codenamed ‘Gorgon’.
Safe houses for a hitman
Of the 7.5 million euros that the authorities claim the Copja brothers laundered in Albania in 2020, three million allegedly went to the Elba Beton company, owned by Arjan Ormenaj, for the purpose of building an apartment block in Tirana.
Elba Beton was founded in 2001 by 50-year-old Arben Lamcja, who was convicted of involvement in prostitution in Italy in the late 1990s. Investigators allege he was one of those the Copja brothers trusted to administer their profits. In 2006, Lamcja sold Elba Beton to Arjan Ormenaj, though prosecutors believe he remained an unofficial shareholder.
Ormenaj owns shares in other six companies, among them Trans Cement, which was involved with Elba Beton in building a seaside resort in Golem, central Albania, as well as in Tirana in 2021-2023.
According to the Special Court Against Corruption and Organised Crime’s charges, Lamcja and Ormenaj were instrumental in helping the Copja brothers to launder their money through construction and real estate purchases.
In January 2020, Lamcja wrote to Copja on Sky ECC, saying that Ormenaj planned a new apartment block near Tirana’s main hospital and had asked him whether Copja might invest two million euros.
“The door to Arjan Ormenaj is open any time and for whatever sum,” Copja responded.
Less than a year later, Lamcja again wrote to Copja telling him Ormenaj “needs some oxygen”, meaning he needed funds.
At the same time, according to the Special Court Against Corruption and Organised Crime, Lamcja and Ormenaj purchased several apartments on behalf of Copja while naming relatives and friends as the buyers in order to hide the true ownership.
Prosecutors say a number of homes in fact owned by Copja were used as safe houses by his main hitman, Talo Cela.
On the run since 2020, Cela is charged with organising the murder of four people in two separate contract killings as well as money laundering and the armed robbery of a shipment of cash on the tarmac of Tirana International Airport in 2019. As of August 2024, he was still a fugitive.
Ormenaj has been charged with money laundering but his whereabouts are not known.
Lamcja was arrested in Kosovo in early August and extradited to Albania.
BIRN was unable to reach Ormenaj, while Lamcja’s lawyer, Altin Gjata, declined to comment beyond pointing out that his client had been investigated before but charges were never brought.
Merkaj ‘trusted’ to handle Copja cash
Besides Merkaj, Copja had other willing collaborators in laundering his money, prosecutors allege.
Prosecutors identified two of them as Bashkim Lika and Maklen Mici, owners of a currency exchange company called B.Lika, Cimi & Keni. One of their premises is located opposite Albania’s central bank, where officials repeatedly deny that money laundering is an issue in Albania.
Mici is accused of holding, on one occasion alone, some 2.3 million euros of Copja’s money. Some of it was withdrawn by Lamcja.
In what prosecutors allege was another example of money laundering, Dorjan Dyli, a pharmacist, is accused of receiving some 121,000 euros from the currency exchange for the purchase of a Tirana apartment, having identified himself – apparently by an agreed code – as “a friend of Valkani”.
The apartment cost 236,000 euros but the difference was covered by a loan that Dyli received from a bank. The loan was repaid with money sent by Copja, via Mici’s currency exchange, prosecutors say.
In a conversation described in the Special Court Against Corruption and Organised Crime’s decision, Dyli tells Copja he was advised by the director of the bank not to make deposits of more than 10,000 euros and no more often than every five or six days.
Copja also had a taste for gold bars, the decision reads, with Mici helping him get his hands on gold worth 15.4 million euros.
Lika and Mici were arrested in July on charges of money laundering. Their lawyer, Adriatik Kulla, said his clients have done nothing wrong.
“They have been shocked by the charges,” he said, describing the pair as upstanding businessmen and Muslim believers.
“Since they are practicing Muslims, due to their religion, they have nothing to do with any criminal activity,” Kulla told BIRN. “They cannot violate legal and human norms that run contrary to human rights and the law.”
