UK Edition
Albanian criminals deported from the UK for drugs and violence are sneaking back into Britain in the face of a government crackdown on gangsters from the Balkan country, police and court sources reveal.
At least five dangerous criminals deported for crimes including firearms offences have been jailed in the last 18 months after returning to the UK to continue to run their crime empires.
One is on the loose after his European arrest warrant for a road rage shooting in Albania was discharged because he had served his sentence while on remand.
It comes after Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, signed a new deportation agreement with Albania to return convicted offenders and illegal immigrants to the Balkan state.
Increasing numbers of Albanians are turning to people smugglers to cross the Channel on small boats, accounting for four in 10 of all arrivals during a six-week period this summer.
Albanian criminals represent the biggest foreign national group in UK prisons, with more than 1,500 inmates. That comprises around 10 per cent of the foreign jail population, up from two per cent in 2013. Some 487 have been deported this year, double last year’s rate.
New maximum sentence of five years for deported foreign criminals
A Home Office spokesman said: “Deported foreign criminals who attempt to return to the UK should be in no doubt they will face the full weight of the law.
“Now through the Nationality and Borders Act, part of the New Plan for Immigration, they will face a maximum sentence of five years, up from 6 months.”
One Albanian gangster who sneaked back into the UK after deportation and lived freely for years was finally caught with two loaded guns and £70,000 worth of cannabis.
Mauricio Myftaraj has been jailed for 15 years over firearms and drugs offences after police raided his home where they also found 40 rounds of ammunition, gunpowder, ball bearings and £20,000 in cash.
Myftaraj was deported in 2015 and banned from returning after he was jailed three years earlier for a firearms offence. He managed to return illegally and continued his involvement in serious and organised crime.
Another Albanian county lines drug-dealer, Xhenson Duka, was caught with more than £10,000 worth of cocaine and a knife after returning following deportation. He was jailed for three years at Maidstone Crown Court and has since been deported.
Flogert Farruku who was found acting as a “gardener” at a £60,000 cannabis farm had previously been deported having been caught doing exactly the same activity. He has now been jailed once more and again faces deportation upon his release.
Albanian gangs cornering cannabis market
Arjan Kikija, an illegal drug-dealing immigrant who had already been deported before returning to live in Basildon, tried to fool police with a false ID after hiding a Taser in his coat pocket.
He was jailed for more than two years after he was caught with the fake documents and weapon and has been deported for a second time.
Gramos Tota 33 who was arrested in the UK in August 2020 on a warrant from Albania for a road rage shooting involving a Kalashnikov gun is believed free in the UK after being discharged at London magistrates.
The Judge ruled that Tota had served his sentence whilst being on remand in the extradition case.
Albanian gangs who have traditionally dominated the importing and sale of cocaine are increasingly cornering the market in cannabis farms as they exploit modern slavery laws to avoid prosecution, say the National Crime Agency.
Investigators say Albanians have brought a ruthless professionalism to cannabis farming that has displaced the Vietnamese as the main domestically-produced source of the drug.
When police raid the disused industrial buildings or residential properties housing the cannabis farms, the “labourers” often claim that they are victims of trafficking and exploitation to avoid prosecution and deportation.