Maximum criminal states that whoever controls the price of the drug controls the market. But whoever controls this economic area will also have power over the territory: the streets. This is how the burgeoning Albanian clan in Rome in 2019, with the help of the Casamonica clan, a historical group in the city, started their entire contact machinery and chartered a private plane. They wanted to bring back seven tons of cocaine from Brazil. A quantity sufficient to flood the capital’s 15 districts with drugs. Also the precise weight to unbalance the Eternal City’s fragmented criminal scene. In January of this year, Italy understood the changes it was facing with the Brasile Low Cost case, an international police operation coordinated from Rome that would have seen the US DEA and infiltrated agents cut off the entry of the cocaine shipment from Brazil, which has upset the balance of the organized Crime in Rome definitely changed. The Albanians, like elsewhere in Europe, wanted their share of the city.
The symbol of this group’s glittering rise is Elvis Demce, a 37-year-old second-generation Albanian who grew up on the outskirts of Rome. “I am God,” he proclaimed as he left prison in May 2020 after serving six years there for a murder of which he was acquitted. And although the fish was already distributed in the city, he behaved like a god. He replaced his compatriots, was arrested in the Brasile Low Cost Operation, earned more than 10 million euros in eight months, imported cocaine directly from South America and received the ‘Ndrangheta’s approval for business. But he violated the first rule of the mafia constitution: keep quiet. “If we hadn’t arrested him, it would be huge now,” the investigation says.
Murals on the buildings of San Basilio on the outskirts of Rome, a neighborhood associated with drug trafficking. Antonello Nusca
Rome never wanted owners. Organized crime was able to find a fluid balance in the Italian capital to disperse a vast territory – the second largest city in Europe – a fertile ground for drug trafficking and money laundering as long as there was no violence. Despite the attempts of the Cosa Nostra, the Camorra and the ‘Ndrangheta, the only nucleus that managed to articulate all the criminal currents was the legendary Banda della Magliana in the 1970s and 1980s: a tutti frutti of criminals and neo-fascists from the terror group NAR (Revolutionary Armed Nuclei).
After its slow decay, certain personalities such as Michele Senese, a Neapolitan and Camorra delegate in Rome, became catalysts for all interests converging in the city. But his arrest in 2013 and the slow dissolution of his clan opened the door to new groups in 2017, among which Albanians stood out. “There was another phenomenon that marked the turning point: the murder of Diabolik,” says a prosecutor who knows the universe of the Eastern European mafia well.
Fabrizio Piscitelli, nicknamed Diabolik, was the leader of the Lazio ultras. But a criminal who controlled part of Rome’s drug trade also received significant support from groups of Albanians. In fact, it was he who introduced her to the criminal scene. “They shared football and political beliefs,” says a judge. Namely fascism. And Lazio, whose northern curve is nourished by citizens of the East. On August 7, 2019, while he was sitting on a bench in Rome’s Aqueducts Park, an Argentine hitman dressed as a runner approached him and shot him in the back of the head before running away. The Antimafia Investigative Directorate (DIA) had long pursued Diabolik, who was attempting to become something of a capo in a city that never allowed owners.
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Piscitelli sat at a table with the Spada, Casamonica and Exposito mafia families on December 13, 2017 to ensure stability in Rome’s Ostia district. A meeting at a restaurant on the outskirts of town, dubbed Pax Romana in the summaries. The key is that at this important meal, the Albanians were already there, represented by Dorian Petoku, the protagonist of that attempt to import seven tons on the chartered flight from Brazil, which was eventually cut short by the intervention of the DEA and an infiltrated police officer. Piscitelli wanted her close by. And when Petoku was arrested in the Low-Cost operation shortly after, it was the new king’s turn.
Elvis Demce was the turning point. The son of Albanians and fully Romanized – his group spoke Romanesco, the local dialect – knew the country’s cultural sources perfectly and was hungrier than anyone. “ISIS is out,” he wrote to his friends, heralding the emergence of a new order when he was released due to lack of evidence in a murder case. A magistrate, well acquainted with his procedures, reconstructs the development of his group. “The Albanians worked for Michele Senese’s Neapolitan clan for 25 years. First as doormen of their premises, then as camels. They are more violent than anyone else and have been strengthened by this muscle. Many ended up in prison and came into contact with the Calabrians. The prison is also a great network of professional contacts and the agreements they made there with the ‘Ndrangheta [la mafia calabresa, la más poderosa de Italia], were basic. Agreements that reflect a fundamental mechanism of any business activity,” he stresses.
The mechanism is simple. The price of coca at origin is also determined by the buyer’s ability to take care of all the post-import phases: collection of the container from the port, custody, transportation, cutting, distribution on the road. And Demce’s gang was exceptional in offering these conveniences to Latin Americans and Calabrians, fetching a competitive price of around 30,000 euros per kilo. The contacts made enabled the purchase of large quantities of cocaine. First to the Calabrians, and then straight to the South American cartels. They did not replace the Calabrians in controlling the drug at source. But they added their control in some ports in northern Europe and in Albania (Durrës). “As a result, certain groups of Albanians managed to sell around 30 kilos a week in Rome. To place this drug you must be sure that you are going to sell it and have large logistics and important distribution infrastructure. That means conquering territory. And that happens with violence or collusion with other groups.”
Image of buildings from Tor Bella Monaca, in the outskirts of Rome.Antonello Nusca
The Albanians did it both ways. And in the Italian anti-mafia prosecutor’s office, the phenomenon was carefully investigated. One of their judges believes that “it is a novelty that this type of mafia has emerged with so much control over the territory”. “They have more fluid structures, less organized. They are not distributed according to positions and roles. It is very different from ‘Ndrangheta, but they are closely related to them. They’re in charge of some drug channels. They were heavy on heroin from Afghanistan and hashish from both Albania and Morocco. And above all, they pay attention to the management of the northern European ports. Especially in Holland: in Rotterdam and Amsterdam”.
The problem is that Demce, who called himself Don Pablo – after Pablo Escobar – wanted to reclaim what he considered his property after his release from prison. But a compatriot had occupied his territory. “These areas were managed by Ermal Aarpaj. And there a fratricidal war began,” emphasize sources from the operational nucleus of the Roman provincial command of the Carabinieri. Demce attempted to assassinate his rival. “There is only one church here. And in this city, even the cobblestones are ours,” he said in a wiretapped conversation. And Arapaj first fled to Spain and then returned to Rome to kill Demce. Chaos broke out. And all the codes Cosa Nostra learned during the 1990s attacks were cracked. The noise, as always, attracted the police and the judges, who began to surround them. Cornered by the investigation, Demce decided that turning himself in to the state would be the best option.
The plan devised by the Albanian capo consisted of killing police officers and two judges – brothers Francesco and Giuseppe Cascini, who happened to meet to investigate this organization – as recalled by a Carabinieri source. “It was crazy. There has never been an attack on a judge in the Italian capital. And I don’t know if they would have made it to the end, but they had the weapons: grenades, bazookas, rifles… They said they would use them to do just that in a certain place.”
The problem is that the phone calls in which Demce explained that they would carry out the attack in the heart of Rome – Piazzale Clodio, seat of the criminal courts – were made through a phone encryption application called SkyEcc, the server of which had been bugged months earlier by Europol. “They found 170,000 hands-free contacts out there.” Everything was detailed. operations, quantities. Also photos of hostages about to be executed with a gun to their temples awaiting final orders from Elvis Demce. And in March 2021 the arrests began. “This server was like opening a Pandora’s box, especially in Italy. Most criminals of a certain type used this system to communicate. We had whole months of real and detailed conversations. It’s very high-quality evidence. We’re still working on that,” they emphasize in the Carabinieri.
The operation ended last January with 27 arrests and the dismantling of the group’s first shift. They are credited with crimes of international drug trafficking, aggravated by using the mafia method. “Today they are weakened. The hit was very hard. But they are still there. Their fluid and less vertical structure allows them to upgrade faster,” research sources point out. One lifetime, it used to be said, is not enough to get to know Rome. Elvis Demce tried to conquer an eternal city in just 10 months and ended up in prison. It is quite possible that his successors will now take a little more time.
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