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Towers, resorts and cocaine money put Albania’s criminal economy in plain sight.
A SPAK investigation into alleged drug-money laundering has linked the Zvërnec resort controversy, Tirana’s tower boom and Albania’s strategic investment model, deepening public anger after nearly two weeks of anti-government protests.
Tirana Times, June 12, 2026 – A sweeping investigation by Albania’s Special Anti-Corruption Structure, SPAK, has opened a new and explosive front in the country’s political crisis, raising allegations that money from international cocaine trafficking has been laundered through luxury coastal developments, strategic investment schemes and some of the tallest construction projects in Tirana.
The case comes as anti-government protests in Tirana and other cities enter their twelfth day, triggered by the disputed Zvërnec resort project in a protected coastal area near Vlora. What began as a protest against environmental destruction and opaque development has now grown into a broader revolt against corruption, bad governance, clientelism and what many protesters describe as the capture of Albania’s economy by a small political-business network.
SPAK has issued security measures against several figures, including Artur Shehu, linked to land holdings in Zvërnec, and Ilir Shtufi, a construction businessman associated with major development projects in Tirana. The investigation reportedly connects the Zvërnec land transactions, high-rise construction in the capital and suspected proceeds from cocaine trafficking from Latin America into Europe.
SPAK has reportedly seized around 138 million euros connected to transactions involving Albanian Land Development and payments linked to investors involved in the Zvërnec project. The funds were allegedly held in accounts connected to a notary and were tied to the consolidation of land for the coastal development. Prosecutors have not made the full investigation file public, and many of the links remain allegations under criminal investigation.
The most striking element of the case is the alleged connection between the coast and the capital: land in Zvërnec, where a luxury resort promoted by investors associated with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump has been planned, and the construction boom in Tirana, where dozens of high-rise towers have transformed the skyline.
Critics say Tirana is being forced into a new urban identity — a mafia-like skyline of giant towers, many of them empty, rising in a country that has lost a large share of its population through emigration. Similar concerns are now being raised about the southern coast, where luxury resorts, strategic investment projects and large-scale construction are reshaping protected areas and some of the country’s most valuable public assets.
The suspicion that Albania’s construction industry has become a vehicle for money laundering is no longer whispered in private. It has become, as one local observer put it, “a public secret.” Italian anti-mafia prosecutors and investigators have repeatedly warned that criminal groups see Tirana’s real estate market and high-rise developments as an opportunity to launder illicit proceeds. Reports on Italian anti-mafia investigations into the ’Ndrangheta have also pointed to interest in Albania’s construction sector and in high-value real estate in Tirana.
The problem is not only the existence of dirty money, but also the failure of Albanian law-enforcement institutions to systematically follow the money. Albania has an anti-mafia legal framework, but critics say authorities have rarely investigated the source of the hundreds of millions of euros feeding the country’s construction boom. In practice, major interventions often appear to happen only when information, evidence or intelligence comes from Western law-enforcement agencies and partner services.
The latest SPAK operation appears to confirm that pattern. One source told Tirana Times that foreign agencies supplied information that helped orient prosecutors toward the blocking of hundreds of millions of euros, including funds connected to companies involved in the Zvërnec land transactions and assets allegedly linked to suspected drug-trafficking networks.
For years, economists and urban experts have warned that Albania’s construction boom has outgrown the country’s real economy. In Tirana, towers continue to rise even as many apartments remain empty and prices have climbed beyond the reach of average citizens. A local economist said that if the government stopped issuing permits for high-rise construction, the Albanian economy itself would struggle to function — a sign, critics argue, that construction has become less a normal sector of development than the central engine of a distorted financial system.
Investigators reportedly suspect that profits from cocaine trafficking were moved into the formal economy through property, construction and resort development. The alleged criminal groups cited in the material are said to have operated cocaine routes from Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Suriname, Paraguay, Uruguay, Puerto Rico and Brazil toward Europe before investing the proceeds in Albania.
The case also raises difficult questions for Albania’s political leadership. Prime Minister Edi Rama had publicly defended the foreign investors in the Zvërnec project, saying their money was clean and that SPAK could investigate land sellers if necessary. The new investigation now places the flow of funds behind the project under scrutiny, not only the ownership history of the land.
The government has promoted strategic investments as a way to modernize Albania, attract foreign capital and develop tourism. Yet critics say the label has often functioned as a shield for opaque projects, weak public scrutiny and privileged access to public assets. In the south, large developments have altered the coastline. In Tirana, the fever of construction has created what some analysts describe as a cityscape imposed by money of unclear origin.
The silence of parts of the international community in Tirana has also come under criticism. Western governments have strongly supported SPAK as a key institution in Albania’s rule-of-law reform. But local observers argue that many investigations into organized crime and corruption rely heavily on information from Western law-enforcement agencies, while the same international actors have been more cautious in publicly addressing the economic model that allows suspicious capital to circulate through construction, tourism and strategic projects.
The protests have widened precisely because Zvërnec is now seen as more than a local environmental dispute. For many demonstrators, it has become a symbol of a broader system: the destruction of protected areas, the capture of public wealth, the arrogance of power, mass emigration, weak accountability and the concentration of economic opportunity in the hands of a few.
A local analyst put it bluntly: the dividing line between organized politics and organized crime in Albania has become increasingly difficult to see.
SPAK’s investigation is still at an early stage, and all suspects are presumed innocent unless convicted by a court. But the case has already exposed the vulnerability of Albania’s development model. The question is no longer only whether individual towers, resorts or land deals were financed by criminal money. The deeper question is whether Albania’s economy has become dependent on a construction-and-real-estate machine that cannot be fully explained by legal income, domestic demand or normal investment flows.
That question now stands at the center of the country’s political crisis. Zvërnec may have sparked the protests, but the anger on the streets is about much more than one resort. It is about the fear that Albania’s future is being built literally and politically on money that comes from outside the law.
