Through Multiple Operations, Mexican Cartels Have Managed To Expand Their Influence Into Eastern Europe

Imagine you’re a drug trafficker who delivers a shipment of weapons from Eastern Europe to this continent; that the Mexican cartels have paid you a generous sum of money—let’s say 50 million dollars in cash—for those rifles and ammunition; but what seems like a blessing has become a curse: after collecting your money, for example, in the state of Sinaloa, you realize you can’t get it back to the “old continent” by air or land. You need something to help you hide the illicit origin of your cash; so much cash would betray you as a mobster.

Now imagine that near your hotel there’s a casino. A place where thousands of financial transactions take place every day, most of them going unnoticed by an overloaded and outdated surveillance system. Even better: that establishment across the street likes customers with cash. So you gather 50 acquaintances, and each one exchanges a million dollars’ worth of chips with the owners’ tacit approval. Now, your dirty money has taken a significant leap: it now has a legal function—gambling, an activity permitted in Mexico.

Groups of five friends gather at the same poker table. They pretend not to know each other and bet as if the chips were endless. Some lose big, others win small amounts in record time. The outcome doesn’t matter.

After a few hours, the objective is achieved: to simulate activity long enough to convince the authorities that the 50 acquaintances will go to the cashier to cash in their winnings.

Some of them give you a check or transfer that’s recorded as winnings from gambling or a refund for unplayed chips; they hand you that money, now clean: the fruit of chance, not crime. Others ask you to transfer it directly to a foreign bank account you have access to. The legal origin says it all: “Casino Fulano de Tal, S.A. de C.V.,” a legitimate company that pays its taxes on time.

So you just pay a commission to your players, another cut to the casino, and you’re ready to return to Europe with millions in a bank account and without carrying a single bloodstained bill. You lost a little, yes, but you laundered a lot.

This simplified scheme is the one the U.S. government detected three years ago and confirmed a few weeks ago: a network of casinos laundering money through simulated gambling. In this hypothetical scenario, the casino is an investment of the Sinaloa Cartel, and you are a prominent member of the Albanian mafia.

Suspicions of money laundering by the Hysa clan

On November 12, employees of the Skampa Casino and the Ochuna restaurant in Ensenada, as well as the Midas Casino betting center in Playas de Rosarito, were unexpectedly evicted from their workplaces. They were just getting ready to open when a platoon of federal officials ordered them to leave immediately. Amid the chaos, they learned that the Ministry of the Interior was repeating the operation with 10 other businesses belonging to the same family: a simultaneous raid stretching from Baja California to Sinaloa.

These types of operations are uncommon in Mexico due to the number of personnel and the secrecy required. Any leak could lead to a major blunder. But the personnel under Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez couldn’t afford to fail: they had orders signed by federal judges, who were activated at the request of the Attorney General’s Office under pressure from the White House.

In particular, the pressure came to Mexico from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which weeks earlier had issued a red alert: the Albanian mafia was laundering money in Mexico through casinos and luxury restaurants associated with betting houses closely linked to La Mayiza, the Sinaloa Cartel faction loyal to Mayo Zambada.

And by “Albanian mafia” it meant a specific family: the Hysa, a clan based in northern Mexico whose family tree has roots in Elbasan, Albania, a hub for smugglers during the Soviet era. They own these establishments that are allegedly financially supporting La Mayiza in its war against El Chapo Guzmán’s sons and in its attempts to expand its illicit operations in the United States.

“The Hysa organized crime group, comprised of Luftar, Arben, Ramiz, Fatos, and Fabjon, has used its influence, through investments and various businesses in Mexico, to launder drug money. This criminal group is believed to operate with the consent of the Sinaloa Cartel,” the U.S. government stated on November 13. The U.S. is also scrutinizing other businesses belonging to the Mexican-Albanian clan in Canada and Poland.

This is not the first time money laundering suspicions have arisen regarding the Hysa clan. In 2022, Luftar Hysa spent millions of pesos on press releases in the country’s leading newspapers to distance himself from investigations pointing to his association with El Mayo Zambada, who at the time was operating freely, filling the power vacuum left by his associate, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera.

“Those are vile words. I don’t know Ismael El Mayo. I’ve never seen him. My only gifts are charisma and business acumen,” the businessman boasted.

Three years later, his businesses have been shut down by an order authorized by President Donald Trump. It is claimed that the hypothetical scheme I presented at the beginning of this text operated for years with a high degree of sophistication. Its operators believed they would go undetected due to the exotic nature of the route: Sinaloa-Elbasan, Mexico-Albania, America-Europe.

The Albanian Mafia and its Alliances in the Balkans

In 2022, I had the honor of being selected for a journalism fellowship awarded by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. The stipend was reserved for 10 Latin American journalists—among them, myself as the only Mexican national—who were tasked with answering a fundamental question: how deeply infiltrated were Balkan mafias in our countries?

The Balkan Peninsula, in Eastern Europe, comprises 12 countries, either wholly or partially. Some, like Montenegro, have little criminal history, while others, like Albania, are notorious for their mafia presence. The “fis”—an Albanian word for a clan involved in organized crime—are as infamous in the criminal underworld as the Italian ‘Ndrangheta or the Japanese Yakuza. Legends that forged their own reputations.

The first thing I did was consult one of the leading experts in the region: Fatjona Mejdini, director of the Southeast Europe Observatory of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. I did so after months of reviewing newspaper articles, interviewing diplomats, talking with colleagues in Europe, and even checking databases of foreigners imprisoned in Mexico. Everything indicated a tenuous, almost nonexistent, presence of Albanian mafias in our country.

“Why don’t I find as much information about the Albanian mafia in Mexico as I do about the Italian mafia with Los Zetas or the Spanish mafia with the Jalisco Cartel?” I asked Mejdini, and her answer captivated me.

“Because Albanians don’t like doing business with Mexicans. They consider them too violent. They’re frightening,” she told me.

The idea fascinated me: the Albanian mafia, intimidated by the Mexican cartels—that is, the Balkan criminals who, during the communist era, beheaded their rivals, amputated them while they were still alive, and threw them into the sea in chains—did they think the Sinaloa cartel was excessive in its methods of territorial control?

The Albanian mafia emerged with force after the ethnic conflicts of the 1990s in Eastern Europe. It arose as a network of traditional family clans founded on ties of blood, honor, and loyalty, who saw in capitalism a savage opportunity to get rich through the free flow of weapons, drugs, and human trafficking.

But the Albanian mafia didn’t emerge in isolation. It relied on the ‘Ndrangheta—and other Italian organizations—to gain experience in the world’s most lucrative illicit businesses: the Albanians controlled major logistics corridors and key ports like Rotterdam, Antwerp, and Hamburg, while the Italians provided their financial connections and modus operandi for laundering dirty money through legitimate economies. This alliance solidified the Balkans as a hub for European trade in cocaine, heroin, weapons, money laundering, and human trafficking.

With this consolidated partnership, the Albanian mafia set its sights on Latin America. Taking advantage of the collapse of the Medellín and Cali cartels in the 1990s, it expanded into countries like Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil. But its strategy wasn’t to invade territories with direct violence; instead, it partnered with local organizations that allowed them to operate in the shadows.

The Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Cartel sought alliances with Albanian ‘fis’

If these relationships are observed from a satellite—tracing flows, identifying patterns, drawing risk maps—this alliance is no accident: it is the consolidation of a transcontinental criminal power strategy. A hybrid network of Balkan families, Italian mafias, Colombian drug traffickers, and Mexican kingpins.

One of the most unsettling scenarios of contemporary narco-capitalism. What had to happen for the Albanians to lose their fear of the Mexicans? Probably, the love of money won out.

The red of blood pales before the green of the dollar. Because years later, around 2020, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel sought alliances with the Albanian “fis” to have an open door to Europe. The European clans, which for years had resisted, accepted in exchange for hefty cuts and the opportunity to establish their businesses on the Mexican Pacific coast.

The result is a fluid, flexible, and efficient criminal triangle—Mexico, Albania, Italy. The Mexicans provide the drugs and capital; the Italians, the recipients in Europe, distributors, and investors; the Albanians, logistical corridors and money laundering. Everyone wins, no one loses. Or, rather, none of them lose, and we all gain more violence from increasingly wealthy criminal groups.

Now imagine, again, that you are a drug trafficker who has successfully moved another shipment of weapons from Eastern Europe. The Albanian mafia is in the crosshairs of the United States, so you no longer have access to its clans or its connections.

But you do have access to the “wonders” of narco-capitalism: organized crime in the Balkans offers you deals with more of its mafias, such as the Bulgarian, Romanian, Croatian, Greek, and even the Turkish ones, famous for their “brokers” who connect criminal families from continent to continent.

Who will you choose to be your next money launderer in the next game at a casino in Sinaloa?

Source: Milenio