ACQJ editorial office
2025 report of the Directorate for the Prevention of Money Laundering raises a fundamental problem present in the Albanian economy for many years: in Albania, money of unclear origin continues to find easy ways to enter the economy. Not necessarily in dark investment areas or in clandestine activities, but often in the most visible sectors, construction, property, companies, transfers and massive cash circulation.
While in recent years institutions have detected a higher number of suspicious financial movements compared to previous years, the question that remains unresolved is bigger: how much of this phenomenon is actually being controlled and how much has already become a normal part of the economy?
The report doesn’t just talk about suspicious transactions. Between the lines, it describes an economy where money often moves faster than institutions can understand its origins. The same patterns that have been circulating in discussions about the Albanian economy for years appear: properties purchased with unclear sources, international transfers without apparent economic logic, companies raising capital in a short time, and a constant use of cash in a country that still operates largely outside the full financial footprint.
At first glance, the figures give the impression of a system that is getting stronger. There are more analyses, more cases referred and more alerts than in previous years. Albania is gradually approaching European standards of financial monitoring. But the more you delve into the details, the more obvious another contradiction becomes: institutions are becoming more skilled at identifying anomalies, while the economy that produces these anomalies seems to continue to function with almost the same mechanisms.
The real estate market remains in the spotlight. For years, construction has been one of the most visible engines of the Albanian economy and at the same time one of the most difficult sectors to fully understand. Apartments sold at prices that do not always match the market, properties bought and quickly resold with large differences in value, investments that are not clearly linked to declared income, are patterns that have continued to repeat for years, from report to report.
And this is related to a question that has been heard in Tirana for a long time: how is this construction boom actually being financed? How are the dozens of storey towers being financed? In a city where apartment prices have increased much faster than wages, the discussion is no longer just urbanistic. It is also social.
In some cases analyzed by the FIU, individuals or companies made transfers and investments that did not match the activity or economic capacity they declared. In other cases, newly established companies or companies with modest activity showed sudden capital increases or large asset purchases. However, after the analysis, nothing changed.
Another recurring element is the use of family members, associates or third parties to make deposits, transfers or investments. In practice, this creates distance between the money and its real owner, and in an economy where control over beneficial ownership still remains partial, these structures become very difficult to track down.
Some of the cases are related to drug trafficking, tax evasion or other criminal activities. But in many other cases, the specific origin of the money remains unclear. This is precisely where the institutions' greatest limitation lies: they manage to distinguish behaviors that resemble money laundering, but they do not always manage to prove the full chain behind them.
And perhaps this is the most interesting message of the entire document. The problem no longer looks like a series of isolated cases. It is more like an economic model that continues to produce large spaces of uncertainty and evasion. The report describes the models and red flags well, but much less the real dimension of the phenomenon: which sectors have the greatest risk, how much money actually circulates, how many cases end up in confiscations or how effective the link between reporting and punishment is.
In fact, a suspicious transaction is not automatically a crime. A fast-growing company does not automatically prove money laundering. But when the same patterns are repeated over and over again in construction, property, cash and international transfers, they begin to reveal something deeper about how the Albanian economy works.
There is another gap that stands out from the report. The focus remains mainly on traditional forms of money laundering, property, bank transfers and cash. Much less is said about crypto-assets, fintech, art, or more modern forms of international capital circulation, while the European Union itself is increasingly shifting its attention to these sectors.
Equally little is said about the role of professionals who can help hide capital, notaries, accountants, lawyers or companies that create business structures. In many countries these are considered key links in money laundering. Here they remain more in the background, despite the fact that they have consistently been protagonists of judicial investigations in cases of money laundering or organized crime.
But the bigger question is not how many cases are identified. The question is what happens to them afterwards. Eight freezing orders in one year show that the system is responding in some cases. But much less is understood about how many of these cases actually result in seizures, convictions or asset recovery.
The gap between identifying the problem and the ability to tackle it head-on remains wide. Albania has made progress in building reporting mechanisms and aligning with European standards. But the real impact on the informal economy and criminal capital remains difficult to measure.acqj.al
