Albanian Mafia Wars: The Rise of Europe’s Deadliest Narcos

Albanian Mafia Wars is an explosive account of the ultra-violent criminal organisations that now dominate the global drugs trade.

Picking up where hit TV shows like Narcos leave off, this book goes beyond the headlines to chronicle the expansion of one of the world’s most mysterious mafias, from its origins in war-torn Eastern Europe, to its rivalry with New York’s Five Families, and to the chaos unleashed on the streets of Britain by narco gangs with access to South American cocaine pipelines.

This book reveals how:

• Albanian crime gangs fought New York’s Five Families before going on to create one of the world’s most extensive drug trafficking organisations.

• Vast networks of Eastern European gangsters with ties to South American cartels have seized control of Britain’s £5billion cocaine market.

• One of Australia’s biggest cocaine seizures is linked to a bloody underworld conflict stretching from South Africa to Eastern Europe.

• Some of Europe’s biggest drugs barons have effectively cheated justice thanks to corrupt and ineffective legal systems in their home countries.

PLUS:

• This updated version takes account of how the global lockdown has affected drug traffickers and their customers around the world.

Featuring a cast of real-life characters including international drugs barons, psychotic hitmen, vengeful warlords and blinged-up street gangsters, the saga takes in everything from the anarchy of Albania’s civil war, to the squalor of sex trafficking in Soho, and the bloody street wars behind the rise of Britain’s new kings of cocaine.

This book brings the story bang up to date, revealing how organised crime syndicates have infiltrated every level of the Albanian state while their godfathers escape justice, paving the way for huge profits to be made in the rest of the world. It also features gritty reportage from the front line of Britain’s drug wars, detailing how Albanian drug gangs operate in London and beyond while maintaining close links with crime lords back home.

This is a must-read for anyone who enjoys Netflix shows such as Narcos and wants to understand the emerging threat from the world’s newest global mafia.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Lucas is a journalist who has written for some of Britain’s best-selling national newspapers, including The Sun, The Daily Mirror, the Mail on Sunday and The Times.

He has covered many of the nation’s most important crime stories in recent years, including the London Bridge and Westminster terror attacks, the Hatton Garden raid, the murder of gangster John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer and the Salisbury poisonings.

John’s first book, Britain’s Forgotten Serial Killer, led to a review of the decision to move notorious inmate Patrick Mackay to an open prison after the matter was raised in Parliament.