18
May 2020
INVESTIGATION
Tall Story: Stashed Cash but No Crime in Albanian Court Five men stood accused of laundering 3.4 million euros hidden in two used cars stopped at an Albanian port. Then a German man called Carlo said everything was legit and the case collapsed. KLODIANA LALA | BIRN | TIRANA
O
n the evening of March 13, 2019, a German citizen named Carlo Rizzatto landed at Tirana International Airport with a story to tell. Two days later, at the Albanian capital’s Serious Crimes Court, the 59-year-old from Stuttgart approached a police officer and introduced himself as the rightful owner of some 3.4 million euros found nine months earlier by Albanian police wedged into the door cavities and upholstery of two used Toyotas being imported into the country via the port of Durres. Describing himself as a businessman dealing in gold, Rizzatto told the officer: “The money is the proceeds of my business in precious metals refined at the address Friedrich STR, 29, Germany.” “I gave it to Elvis Vladi to start a new business.” After a short visit to serious crime prosecutors, Rizzatto left Albania the same day, mission accomplished: Within the year, money-laundering charges against Vladi and four others had been dropped, as one of Albania’s most sensational criminal cases of recent years unraveled. Court documents reviewed by BIRN, however, show prosecutors never corroborated Rizzatto’s story, but that did not stop the judge in the case from dismissing the charges. The defendants now face the minor charge of failing to declare cash at the border; even if found guilty, they stand to get the money back. The dramatic turn of events raises fresh questions about the state of Albania’s justice system even after years of reform efforts nudged along by the European Union and the United States. “Prosecutors had no proof except for the 3.4 million euros,” Radovan Cela, a lawyer for three of the defendants, including Vladi, told BIRN. “Judge Fran Prendi’s decision was one of the best I ever read.”
The itinerary of the trailer Bizark from Albania to Belgium.
He said of Rizzatto: “I see Carlo as a credible man.” Chief suspect disappeared On June 25, 2018, Albanian police announced the seizure of 3.4 million euros in cash of various currencies, hidden in two Toyota Auris cars. Intriguingly, four days before the seizure, the leader of Albania’s opposition Democratic Party, Lulzim Basha, told parliament that a “Toyota Yaris” full of “drug money” had been found and accused a senior MP of the ruling Socialist Party, Taulant Balla, of involvement. Balla sued Basha for defamation and, in the first instance verdict, won. In the meantime, prosecutors Doloreza Musabelliu and Ened Nakuci registered a penal investigation with the office of the Serious Crime Prosecutors. Belgian and German authorities delivered scores of documents to Albania, where prosecutors eventually charged 39-year-old Vladi and his cousins, 33-year-old Alfred Vladi, with creating an organisation for the purpose of money laundering. The men remained at large. Four others – Eduart Cani, the owner of the car hauler carrying the
cars, his son Klevi Cani, Alban Mollaymeri, the owner of the car repair firm in Tirana that paid the customs duties for the cars, and a driver called Agim Ceka – were arrested. Investigators say preparations for the transfer began in April 2018, when Elvis Vladi left Albania via Kosovo accompanied by another person with previous criminal links. On June 12, Alfred Vladi contacted Cani in Tirana regarding the transportation of several used cars from Belgium. Cani, who at the time was under house arrest on suspicion of domestic violence, ordered his son, Klevi, and the driver Ceka, to go to Belgium. They left the next day in a hauler named ‘Bizark’ and arrived in the city of Charleroi, 60 kilometres south of Brussels, on June 16. They picked up nine cars, stopping just over the German border in the spa city of Aachen where export papers were prepared. The cars arrived by ferry to Durres, where the police discovered the cash. Prosecutors identified Elvis Vladi as the ringleader. He returned to Albania by plane on June 22, after the cars began the journey from Belgium. Prosecutors believe he had come back
to wait for the cash, but when police went looking for him Vladi disappeared. Vladi, who judging by the court documents split his time between Albania and Belgium, had a previous scrape with the law in 2015 when he and a number of other Albanians were arrested in London after UK police infiltrated an alleged drugs gang and seized 16 kg of cocaine. Vladi was found not guilty in 2016. ‘I know nothing about this’ In March 2019, some nine months after Vladi’s disappearance, the Serious Crime Prosecution in Tirana received a copy of an agreement signed by Vladi and a man named Bledar Fejzo, a representative of a firm called BHF Consulting, dated April 3, 2018 and concerning the purchase of a plot of land at Seman beach in the municipality of Fier on the Albanian coast. Seman is an undeveloped strip of coastline notorious for decades of pollution by the local petroleum industry. On March 9, 2019, Vladi, a wanted man, issued a statement via a notary claiming he had been engaged in an honest business transaction. His lawyers delivered the statement to prosecutors. Days later, Rizzatto told his story to the police officer and prosecutors. Rizzatto produced a bank statement which he said proved he had deposited the money in his own
