Criminal Planet (2021) s01e01 Episode Script

International organized
crime has no natural predator.
Crime syndicates are expanding
and forging alliances
across the globe.
Here comes Santa with the goods!
As law enforcement
struggles to stop them,
up to five percent of the global
economy is now in criminal hands.
I m Paul Radu, and
for the past 20 years
I have investigated
international organized crime
in the tune of 400 billion.
And this is a very, very small
slice of what s really going on.
I think there are some
people let s go, let s go.
In this series, I m working with a
team of reporters around the world
Are you angry with yourself
for being part of this?
to discover how a
generation of international gangs
are redrawing the criminal map.
[Criminal Planet]
Cocaine seizures in Europe
have reached record levels.
Britain is at the epicenter, with
the highest number of users.
Khalad Uddin was
described as pivotal
to a cocaine
distribution operation
which sourced large quantities of
the drug from Albanian smugglers.
A British Government
report in 2020
found the cocaine market here
is dominated by Albanian gangs,
whose supply network stretches
across British towns and cities.
Albanian national Erald Mema
sourced and distributed
deliveries of cocaine
I want to know how a small country
on the south-east edge of Europe,
with a population
of just 2.8 million,
is able to supply
Europe s biggest market.
To see how widely their cocaine
distribution network has spread,
I m starting my investigation
with the upper echelons
of British society.
I was asked to
wear a suit tonight
because we ve been
invited to an illegal,
elite mansion party
in central London.
We were invited by some
members of the Bullingdon Club,
which is an elite drinking club
at Oxford University that counts
David Cameron, Boris Johnson,
a slew of prime
ministers among its ranks.
We re pretty certain there
s going to be cocaine there.
Londoners consume half a
million lines of cocaine a day,
twice as much as any
other European city,
making it a highly lucrative
market for cocaine cartels.
One floor up is the
sex room, apparently.
We re not allowed to film
up there, for obvious reasons.
And then here is the one
room that we re allowed to film in
for the rest of the night.
So, do you use cocaine?
I do indeed.
How much of that do you
think you ll use in a night?
Oh, I can go through
maybe two grams for myself.
If you were to order cocaine right
now, how quickly would it arrive?
I d say 25 minutes.
Ha! You got someone
who s on time, eh?
Who do you buy it from?
I have an Albanian
friend that I go to.
-Albanian?
-Yes.
What s different about him
compared to other dealers?
Ooh, so much more efficient.
It s not just wealthy Londoners
buying from Albanians.
The gangs have expanded
their territory so fast,
they ve had to recruit teenagers
to move their product
throughout the suburbs.
I was, like, 13, 14.
I wanted to help my mum
out with rent, sort of thing,
but got dragged into
it by some Albanians.
That s how I got
into it at first, really.
There s always Albanian
gangs about. It s a 24/7 service.
You call them up
any time of the day,
they ll come drop you,
just give them an address.
It s like McDonald
s, but for drugs.
As well as selling
straight to users,
they ve also taken over the
wholesale distribution of cocaine
to the trap houses that local gangs
use to cut it and wash it into crack.
They ve cornered the
market at the moment.
If you cross them, then
they use violence, kidnapping,
taken away and not
to be returned again.
They ll just make you disappear.
This reputation for
violence is no rumor.
On the streets of East London,
a gang called the
Hellbanianz are ready for war.
These drill music videos made for
the Hellbanianz aren t empty threats.
Several members not seen here
have been sentenced to life for
cocaine supply and armed assault.
Despite their craving
for views on YouTube,
their lyrics show they
re incredibly secretive.
[Secret Filming]
Our fixer is here.
He reckons that that s them.
I guess we just
have to keep waiting.
Alright, peace.
We spent weeks trying to meet
with the Albanian gangs in Britain,
arranging clandestine night-time
meetings in backstreet car parks.
One of them came very
close to one of our vans,
shined their lights into our vans,
looked at us for about 40 seconds,
and then zoomed off, and
then all of the cars zoomed off.
So what I m thinking might have
happened is these gangs are paranoid
and they do their own
kind of counter surveillance.
The gangs follow an ancient
code of honor called Besa,
which forbids them from
speaking to outsiders.
If you violate Besa, there will
be effects of that back in Albania.
Someone with your
family will be hurt.
It s absolute control for them
because you ll always have family.
And Albania is a small country,
and everybody knows everybody.
And you don t want
your family to be at risk
because of your actions
somewhere abroad.
Albania, being one of the
poorest countries in Europe,
bred some of the most
violent crime in Europe.
This is how you keep on
projecting strength through violence,
and that s key to
organized crime,
for people to be afraid of them.
If the London-based Albanian
gangs are impossible to infiltrate,
maybe their suppliers in
Colombia will speak to me.
So I ll put you in touch with someone
who s going to meet you in Medellin.
It s 3:00 a.m. in London,
and we ve just
managed to make contact
with someone very high
up in the Clan del Golfo,
which is Colombia s biggest
drug trafficking organization.
And he s the one who deals
directly with the Albanian mafia,
so we re going
to give him a call.
What s the relationship between
the Clan del Golfo
and the Albanian mafia?
Seven tonnes of
cocaine every few weeks?
That s almost eight billion
dollars worth of cocaine every year
just for the Albanian mafia.
So are there Albanian
criminal members in Colombia
who the Clan deals with?
Seventy percent of
the world s cocaine
is still produced in Colombia,
and the Clan Del
Golfo control most of it.
A right-wing paramilitary group, the
US Government has designated them
as one of the top five transnational
organized crime gangs in the world.
For the first time ever, they
ve given a film crew full access
to their international
trafficking operation.
They hope showing their
power and global reach
will help them secure a peace
deal with the Colombian Government.
The Clan have told us they have
everyone from commercial pilots
to staff in Colombian Air
Traffic Control on their payroll.
Officially, this
private cargo plane
is making a legitimate flight
from Bogotá to Caracas,
but the Clan have ordered it
to stop at a clandestine airfield.
Their cargo must
cross the border
in time for an onward
shipment to Europe.
The Colombian military have a
shoot-down policy for narco-planes,
so the pilots can only
switch off their radar
transponder for a few minutes
before it looks suspicious.
The Clan have 3,000
sworn-in members,
who coordinate dozens
of these flights every week
to feed our global
demand for cocaine.
The United States have
spent over one trillion dollars
on the war on drugs,
much of it in Colombia.
The DEA have downed
Escobar and the Cali Cartel,
but cocaine production
is still going up.
Paul Radu spent two years in
Colombia investigating the cartels.
In terms of the
economics of cocaine,
the impact was zero.
And even it was the reverse
of what the DEA intended
because what Escobar did,
and with the other cartels,
was they presented
the world with the proof
that this is a
lucrative industry.
That this is worth getting into.
That this is real business.
Clan del Golfo is one of
the most successful Colombian
criminal organizations right now
because they ve understood
that they can infiltrate politics
in a way that s different
than what Escobar tried, right?
Escobar tried to be not
only the leader of the cartel,
he wanted to be the face of
the cartel; he wanted everything.
He wanted too much.
And these people
are a lot more low key.
They are operating
behind the scenes.
They are corrupting politicians,
not only in Colombia,
but abroad as well.
They re expanding
quite well into Brazil.
And what s interesting
about Clan del Golfo
is that they developed their
own kind of security companies.
And they ve employed
people from the army,
people with military experience,
people who ve been trained,
sometimes by the US military.
So it s the military knowledge when
it comes to the physical defense,
then there s the military knowledge
when it comes to the digital defense,
and they coupled this
together very well to kind of form
a PMC a private military company
that s very, very successful
at this type of trade.
I don t think the DEA can
stop them at this point in time.
Our Colombian crew are
traveling to the Gulf of Urabá,
the heartland of the
Clan s cocaine operation.
They use the cover of the
dense jungle to hide the cocaine,
and the vast river network
to traffic onto container
ships destined for Europe.
To enter this area,
we need the permission of
the Clan s regional commander
and head of security.
He has a reputation for violence,
but is ironically nicknamed Baby.
He is constantly flanked
by a hitman, named Flaco.
Hey, Matt.
I wanted to give you an
update because yesterday
we were filming
Baby s interview.
OK, how d it go?
The police were going in
circles and they basically stopped.
So the Clan guys were about
to do a shooting to the police,
so yeah, we just had to
cut it, just run away from there.
It became really dangerous.
You got out of there.
OK, that s good.
Is there going to be a shipment
coming out soon that we can film?
Yeah, actually we
ve just been told
that they re moving
ahead with a shipment,
so we re going to go to the
dock entrance to catch that.
Alright, thanks, man. Bye.
Before we get to see how
the Clan smuggle 100 kilos
onto international-bound
container ships,
Baby and his soldiers want
to show us an air hangar
previously owned by Pablo
Escobar, who the Clan revere.
The war on drugs in Colombia
has claimed 215,000 lives.
Baby and his crew were
recruited at a young age.
The DEA spent 20 years
and billions of dollars
trying to capture Escobar
and dismantle his
trafficking network.
Twenty years on, the
new owners of this airfield
are trafficking just as
much, if not more, cocaine.
The FBI have now
placed a $5 million bounty
on the head of
the Clan del Golfo.
The Clan have
spotters in every town
and have noticed a
window of opportunity
the large police presence that
was in the area last night has left.
They now have two hours
to move 100 kilos of cocaine
downriver to a
Europe-bound container ship.
The Clan gets spooked
by word from their spotters
that police have
reappeared in the area.
So they frantically look
for a new drop-off spot.
The Clan have hidden the
cocaine in the dense jungle
near the mouth of the river.
Next, a speedboat will
come to deliver it from here
to a Europe-bound container
ship in the Caribbean Sea.
While container ships
account for the route to Europe,
the cocaine destined
for the American market
must first make it across
the border with Panama.
A shipment needs to
leave this afternoon.
Heavy border patrols by the
Panamanian security forces
make it incredibly
difficult to cross by road.
But the Clan has developed
a creative new way
to make sure the shipment
goes right over their heads.
Half the Clan s cocaine is smuggled
by Mexican cartels into America.
The other half, mostly
concealed in container ships,
goes to the European market.
The Albanian mafia have opened
a new route to their home country.
The cocaine is then smuggled
overland across Europe.
They ve also started coordinating
direct shipments to Britain.
Felixstowe is the biggest
container port in Britain,
and Customs regularly
check shipments.
But with over 400 million tonnes
of freight coming in every year,
it s no surprise that an estimated
90 percent of the cocaine
slips through the net.
How do you know
which ones to search
because surely there s
millions coming through?
We re intel-led at this port.
Given the number of
containers that come in,
we couldn t possibly
hope to do all of them.
So where s the
concealment in here?
We ve been looking
at the bulkhead.
This would be a
temperature-controlled container.
Should I try and find it
and see if I can figure it out?
You go for it.
Wait hang on a second.
What s behind here?
It doesn t look like the back.
Oh, is this it?
Well done.
There s almost 120 tonnes of cocaine
coming into the UK every year now.
That s a 300 percent
increase from 2011,
and it makes the UK
the biggest consumer of
powder cocaine on the continent.
Most of it comes in
shipping containers like these,
but on the way, something
incredible happens.
In Colombia, the package, one
kilo of cocaine, is worth $1,500.
By the time it gets
here, it s worth $77,000.
So if you were to bring a suitcase
of cocaine from Colombia to here,
you d have just become a
multi-millionaire instantaneously.
It s pretty much the most profitable
substance in the entire world.
The British cocaine market
is worth $6.5 billion a year.
We ve uncovered that
Colombia s Clan del Golfo
are working in close alliance
with the Albanian mafia
to ship tonnes of
cocaine into Britain.
We know that gangs
like the Hellbanianz
boast about their cocaine
supply through music videos
and dominate distribution
across British towns and cities.
But who is coordinating
this global network?
And where are the
billion-dollar profits going?
I ve come to
Albania to find out.
It s estimated that 50
percent of the economy
is linked to organized crime,
and even top politicians here have
associations with narco-traffickers.
Artan Hoxha is Albania s
top investigative journalist.
He s had numerous death threats;
he s had to live in
hiding for a lot of his life.
His work doesn t just
uncover the Albanian mafia,
it also exposes corruption at the
highest levels of Albanian society.
We re meeting Artan outside a
palace that belongs to the Hajri brothers,
a family of Albanian
super-criminals,
who make millions trafficking
the Clan del Golfo s
cocaine into Britain.
In February 2020,
this palace was seized
by the Albanian police,
following the charges
that the Hajri brothers
kidnapped a man
called Jan Prenga.
Police belief Prenga s brother
had stolen 285 kilograms of cocaine
from the Hajri family
after it landed in
Portsmouth Harbour in Britain.
The shipment had come
from the Clan del Golfo.
Artan explains the police
case against the Hajri brothers.
Can we take a closer look?
The Hajris story demonstrates
how cocaine is produced in Colombia,
sold in England by
the Albanian mafia,
and then converted into
real estate in Albania.
So, if this has
been confiscated,
why are there not government
officials and police guarding it?
I think there s some
people appearing.
Yeah, let s
OK, let s--
OK, let s go.
Let s go, let s go.
Can we finish the
interview in our car?
The Hajri brothers
deny the charges.
Can you explain the connection
between the Albanian mafia groups
and the Clan del Golfo?
This is the first time I ve learned
that the Clan and the Albanian mafia
were equal partners, sharing the
billions they make in a 50/50 split.
Drug traffickers have connections
at the very highest levels
of the Albanian government.
In 2019, former Minister
of the Interior Saimir Tahiri
received a three-year
sentence for abuse of power.
The court found he had
inexplicable links to a distant cousin
convicted of trafficking
3.8 tonnes of drugs to Italy.
Tahiri was cleared of a
further charge of trafficking
and denies all charges,
but the Court of Appeal
has now ordered a retrial.
To understand how
Albania became so corrupt,
you have to go back to 1997.
That was the year that the
entire economy collapsed,
when it turned out two
thirds of the population
had their money invested
in pyramid schemes
operated by companies
supported by the government.
In the chaos that followed,
criminal gangs took control
of several Albanian cities
and opened up the military
s arsenals to the public.
Hundreds of millions in currency
was stolen from Government treasuries.
You look at the 90s, you
look at the fall of communism,
these were lawless times
all over Eastern Europe.
But in particular in a
country like Albania,
that started off in a very
bad place too, you know,
because communism was
a different breed in Albania.
People were starving in Albania.
There s a point where criminals
really started getting a
grasp on the society because
the Government was
not able to govern at all.
After the fall of the communism,
the people who were working
in the security forces of the state,
in the intelligence services,
found themselves on their own.
Now, what they had
was the know-how.
They knew exactly how to
set up an offshore type
of company in Luxembourg
or how to open a bank
account in Switzerland.
They had contacts
in all these places,
informants that
they built over time.
So this is when organized
crime started developing
on the back of the former
communist secret services.
They actually started
taking over entire economies.
We have members of the Parliament
connected to organized crime.
In Albania, unfortunately, it
started with the local level;
mayors of towns, of cities,
connected straight
to organized crime,
elected because organized
crime is backing them,
and you have criminals
themselves getting elected.
It s when you see politicians
on the right of the spectrum
cooperating with the leftists
without any problem because
in the end you don
t have left and right.
So politics is just a
cover-up, many times,
for the real business that
happens behind the scenes.
We re trying to speak to one of
the Albanian mafia s top smugglers
to see how this
endemic corruption
allows them to transport
cocaine across Europe.
In terms of him, is he under
much police surveillance?
From the Albanian police?
We can get to the border
between Albania and Montenegro
in about two to three hours.
We finally managed
to get in touch with
someone high up in
the Albanian mafia.
He s one of the top
smugglers in the Balkans,
so he traffics cocaine and
arms for the Albanian mafia.
He is called Lucky.
He s actually one of the
most wanted men in Europe.
And because he s under
complete surveillance in Albania
by the police, we re having
to travel across the border
into Montenegro
to meet with him.
Once through the border, we
re told to pack down our cameras
and follow Lucky s
car to another location.
So how did you get
the nickname Lucky?
So the Albanians killed your
brother, but you still work for them?
They killed his wife?
-Yeah.
Who killed him?
So is that one of the main
ways that the Albanian mafia
keeps hold of its power, by
murdering people who try to take over?
Yeah.
Are you always carrying
a weapon on you?
Have you ever had to
kill someone yourself?
Have you ever had a
gun battle with the police?
Can you tell me that story?
The police shot
himself? By accident?
Right. Did he definitely
shoot himself
or is that just the story?
What do you usually
traffic across borders?
Have you ever bought cocaine
from the Clan del Golfo in Colombia?
So it was quite easy for you to
pay your way out of the prison?
Someone you worked for?
Yeah.
He was very on edge and was
very reluctant to give any detail
about things like why he s been
the victim of murder attempts,
why his brother was murdered,
whether he s killed anyone.
But the picture he painted of
Europe was one of corruption.
Basically, it s not some high-tech
method that smugglers use
to feed the massive demand
for tonnes and tonnes of cocaine
across this continent,
it s money.
They just pay officials
in every country.
They pay politicians, border
officials, shipping companies.
The profit is so huge
that paying off officials
is easy for them.
After smugglers like
Lucky transport the cocaine,
an army of super-fast
Albanian couriers,
based in every major
European city, distribute it.
And they re all
controlled from here.
Artan has provided
for us a source who is
basically someone who
has worked in London
for a very powerful
Albanian mafia family
as a drug dealer for many years.
And he s now come
back to Albania,
so we re going to meet
him on the terrace over here.
Can you tell me a little bit
about your job in London?
How is the group that you re working
for able to get cocaine delivered
so quickly to customers
all over London?
The Capja family run an
international drug trafficking network,
and police suspect
members of the Capja family
are connected to
dozens of murders.
The Albanian Prime Minister
was photographed standing next to
the head of the Capja family.
But when asked on Albanian TV,
he refused to answer
questions about any ties.
London-based street gangs, like
the Hellbanianz, get all the press,
but it s families like this
that hold all the power.
How have these Albanian groups
managed to take over the
cocaine trade in London?
Do you think that the consumers,
the people who actually
use cocaine in London,
would care if they
knew that your family
were being threatened
back in Albania?
I want to know how so
many young Albanians
end up in this
terrifying servitude.
Around 70 percent of
Albanians in prison in the UK
are recruited from the country s
impoverished northern regions.
If you re in London and you
have an Albanian coke dealer,
there s a high chance
that they come from Has,
which is in the northern
mountains of Albania
and is one of the poorest
districts in the country.
The average salary in Albania
is around 330 euros a month.
Here, it s even lower.
A lot of young
people who live here
aim to leave and work in
the cocaine market abroad.
And the biggest
cocaine market is the UK.
Zamir is the only
person from his class
who hasn t left
Has to go to the UK.
Have many of the people who
ve left Has to go work in England
ended up working
in the drug trade?
Are they working for the
Albanian mafia in London?
Have you heard any of the
Albanian gangsta rap that s
coming out of
cities like London?
Do you find the lifestyle
that the Hellbanianz advertise
in their music videos appealing?
How realistic do you
think that lifestyle is?
Do you think that the music
videos are an accurate portrayal
of what reality as a
cocaine dealer in London is?
How much money
is it to get to London?
The Albanian mafia are ready and
waiting to smuggle Zamir to London.
And when he gets here,
to entrap him in an exploitative
and dangerous criminal economy
that s almost
impossible to escape.
But with little
employment in Has,
and the siren call
of a wealthy lifestyle
selling cocaine on
London s streets,
it s difficult to see why people
like Zamir don t take the chance.
These problems
might seem far away
to people actually
doing cocaine in London,
but the City of London
is the global money laundering
capital of the drug trade,
with hundreds of billions of dirty
pounds passing through here.
The Colombian cartels,
the Albanian mafia families,
the cocaine users in London,
and the banks of western
Europe are all connected.
They re all part of
the same economy.
Banks are extremely
important in the criminal game.
They created a ready-made system
that was handed on a plate to criminals,
saying, Do you have
some money to launder?
We have this
opportunity for you.
We do have this great opportunity.
We do have the companies.
We do have the bank accounts.
We do have the money channels.
We do have the invoices.
And this is how you
need to use our services.
So the criminals don t
even have to move at all.
Everything is just
a few clicks away.