Western Balkan criminal groups maintain a significant presence in Germany.

Europol’s latest assessment of criminal networks, published this April, notes that organized groups from the Western Balkans retain a significant presence in the EU, particularly in Germany.¹ Since 2020 and 2021, the law enforcement takedowns of EncroChat and Sky ECC – encrypted messaging applications favoured by criminals – have spurred arrests,² including of criminals from the Western Balkans in Germany. These and other cases show that criminals from the Western Balkans are active players in Germany’s drug markets, as well as in human trafficking and money laundering; a picture corroborated by a deep examination of police statistics.

Thanks to data harvested from Sky ECC, Milivoj Todorovic, from Bosnia and Herzegovina, was arrested in November 2022 in Frankfurt am Main, on suspicion of drug trafficking through connections to Montenegro’s Škaljari clan, which N1 reports is a major player in shipping cocaine into and through Europe.³ In another case built on intelligence from the Sky messaging app, in July 2022 Germany extradited Savo Marinković – who was already serving a prison term for drug trafficking – to Bosnia and Herzegovina through an INTERPOL Red Notice, on suspicion of the 2018 murder of two police officers in Sarajevo;⁴ his trial is ongoing.⁵

Statistics from the Bundeskriminalamt (Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office) for 2021 and 2022 show that Albania ranks among the top five foreign contributors of organized criminals operating in Germany, placing the country fourth after Turkey, Poland and Italy. Assessing organized crime groups by the nationality of their leading members, Albanian-led criminal groups rank second to predominantly Turkish groups among foreign criminal networks active in Germany.⁶

The picture is slightly more nuanced if drug-related organized crime is separated from organized crime cases in general. The most prevalent foreign groups involved in drug trafficking-related offences are Turkish, Polish and Albanian. When it comes to cocaine, Albanians constitute the biggest category of foreign offenders (15%).⁷ Albanian groups are also major players in Germany’s cannabis market.⁸

One reason for the strong involvement of Albanian and other Western Balkan organized crime groups in the drug business and other criminal enterprises may be the large diaspora of people from the former Yugoslavia and Albania who emigrated to Germany in the 1990s. Another may be the networks that criminal groups from the Western Balkans maintain in Western European ports – a gateway for cocaine – as well as heroin and cannabis trafficked via the Balkan route.

Poly-criminal multi-national networks

Most of the criminal cells from the Western Balkans that are active in Germany appear to be part of wider multi-national networks, dispelling the myth of a monolithic ‘Balkan cartel’. When the German national police or joint operations through Europol net large numbers of organized criminals, Balkan citizens often figure among those arrested. For example, in May 2023, Europol coordinated an international operation that resulted in the arrest of 37 people, several of whom were from the Western Balkans, including an alleged kingpin from Bosnia and Herzegovina who was already serving a four-year sentence in Italy.⁹ In June 2023, Eurojust and Europol supported authorities in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands in dismantling a drug trafficking network that authorities say comprised mainly Albanian nationals; 35 suspects were arrested. This criminal network is accused of trafficking cocaine and cannabis with a combined market value of more than €1 billion from South America to Europe.¹⁰

An international law enforcement operation in May 2023 resulted in the arrest across Europe of 37 members of a criminal group, among them Western Balkan nationals.

Photo: Europol

In October 2023, a major drug trafficking ring was broken when dozens of suspects were arrested and several hundred kilograms of cocaine were seized from a network spanning the German federal states of Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg as well as Croatia and Poland. Among those arrested were citizens of Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Montenegro.¹¹ In February 2024, Italian and Albanian authorities, in joint efforts aided by Eurojust and Europol, conducted a major operation that led to the arrest of 59 suspects, including individuals in Albania, Italy, Germany and the UK. This network stands accused of smuggling heroin, cocaine, hashish and cannabis into Germany and Spain using vehicles equipped with concealed compartments.¹² These operations show how Germany is both a large retail market for drugs as well as an important transshipment point for wholesale transactions in cocaine for distribution within Europe and beyond.

The above-mentioned cases clearly show that criminal networks increasingly cooperate beyond ethnic boundaries, overcoming traditional cleavages to the profit of all networks involved. The cases also show the transnational nature of the networks. For example, in the case of cocaine, organized criminal groups from the Western Balkans have good contacts with criminal groups at the source of supply in Latin America, wholesale distribution points (including through the port of Hamburg) and retail distribution locations in other European countries.

Balkan criminal groups are known to have good links with Italian and Turkish mafia organizations. More generally, they are known as clever entrepreneurs in the drug trade. According to a former US Drug Enforcement Administration official, criminals from the Balkans are ‘more than happy to work with the Israelis, the Dutch, the Swedes, the Dominicans and the Chinese … [They] work with everyone.’¹³

Criminal ecosystems vary considerably across Germany. While in some cities so-called clan-based – usually Arab, Turkish or Kurdish – organized crime networks are dominant (e.g. in Berlin), in others Albanian or other Western Balkan dominated groups control a significant share of profitable illicit markets (e.g. in Hamburg).¹⁴ Even in big cities such as Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, where Balkan groups are junior partners, they are apparently adept at cutting deals with more powerful groups.¹⁵

In Hamburg, Albanian, Serbian and Montenegrin organizations are widely considered the most powerful groups, particularly those engaged in cocaine trafficking, while groups predominantly composed of nationals from Kosovo, North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina are regarded more as fixers or engaged in transportation.¹⁶ Croatian organized crime groups have a strong presence in Germany, again stemming in part from the large Croatian diaspora that grew as a result of migration during the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

While criminal groups from the Western Balkans seem to be able to work well with groups made up of people of different nationalities, they also have a reputation for violence. According to 2023 federal data, Albanian offenders ranked fourth in terms of the number of suspects found to be armed when arrested for drug trafficking-related offences.¹⁷ Organized violence in Germany sometimes stems from disputes between groups from the Balkans, such as the bloody conflict between the Škaljari organization and the Kavač, another Montenegrin clan.¹⁸ In May 2019, for example, two men were murdered in Forst, Germany, in an incident reportedly linked to that clan war.¹⁹

Other types of crime

In addition to drug trafficking, criminal groups from the Western Balkans are alleged to be involved in racketeering and human trafficking, particularly for sexual exploitation. Individuals from the Western Balkans have been active in outlaw motorcycle gangs in Germany.²⁰ Particular media attention has focused on the United Tribuns motorcycle gang, which was founded in 2004 by Armin Ćulum,²¹ a Bosnian-born former boxer. Many of the gang’s members originate from Bosnia or other parts of the Western Balkans. The group, also known as the Balkan Brothers Herkunft,²² became notorious for human trafficking, specifically for sexual exploitation, as well as for assassinations.²³ They even competed with local chapters of the Hells Angels and Bandidos. In 2022, Germany banned United Tribuns on the grounds that the group posed a severe public threat and was responsible for a series of criminal acts.²⁴

In February 2022, German police dismantled a network of car thieves from Bosnia and Herzegovina who were suspected of stealing €1.5 million worth of luxury cars, mostly in Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse.²⁵ In April 2023, six Serbs were arrested in Berlin for stealing luxury cars.²⁶

In February 2024, police in Darmstadt broke up an alleged criminal network of Balkan nationals who were involved in smuggling people into Germany for illegal employment, mostly on construction sites. Three Serbians and three Croatian citizens were arrested as well as a Montenegrin, a German and a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on suspicion of tax evasion worth €10.4 million in connection with this case.²⁷

Criminal actors from the Western Balkans are also involved in money laundering, either moving money made in Germany back to the Balkans or investing their illicit gains into licit businesses, real estate or cryptocurrencies.²⁸ German authorities have found it difficult to fully understand the scope of money laundering, but they believe it increased between 2021 and 2022. Organized criminal groups in Germany accumulated at least €998 million of illegal proceeds, and invested around 45% of the funds in cryptocurrencies to launder the profits, according to case data compiled by authorities. Additionally, in 2022, out of 19 active national money laundering investigations, one involved an organized criminal group dominated by Albanians and another by individuals from Bosnia and Herzegovina.²⁹

Conclusions

Police have made significant progress following the decryption of the Sky ECC application, and ongoing investigations are expected to result in more arrests of Balkan criminals operating in Germany. However, there remains a need for more joint law enforcement investigations, involving agencies from the Western Balkans, and enhanced collaboration between regional prosecutors’ offices. Additionally, the large number of Western Balkan nationals with dual citizenship working in the EU, especially in Germany, complicates law enforcement efforts to track criminal activities, particularly in terms of money laundering and cash smuggling to the Balkans. The need for greater impetus is highlighted by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime’s Global Organized Crime Index. Germany’s resilience to organized crime, while relatively high, is decreasing; the country’s score on this metric fell from 7.67 in 2021 to 7.50 in 2023.³⁰

Notes