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Tall Story: Stashed Cash but No Crime in Albanian Court

Five men stood accused of laundering 3.4 million euros hidden in two used cars stopped at an Albanian port. Then a German man called Carlo said everything was legit and the case collapsed.

KLODIANA LALA | BIRN | TIRANA O n the evening of March 13, 2019, a German citizen named Carlo Rizzatto landed at Tirana International Airport with a story to tell.

Two days later, at the Albanian capital’s Serious Crimes Court, the 59-year-old from Stuttgart approached a police officer and introduced himself as the rightful owner of some 3.4 million euros found nine months earlier by Albanian police wedged into the door cavities and upholstery of two used Toyotas being imported into the country via the port of Durres.

Describing himself as a businessman dealing in gold, Rizzatto told the officer: “The money is the proceeds of my business in precious metals refined at the address Friedrich STR, 29, Germany.”

“I gave it to Elvis Vladi to start a new business.”

After a short visit to serious crime prosecutors, Rizzatto left Albania the same day, mission accomplished:

Within the year, money-laundering charges against Vladi and four others had been dropped, as one of Albania’s most sensational criminal cases of recent years unraveled.

Court documents reviewed by BIRN, however, show prosecutors never corroborated Rizzatto’s story, but that did not stop the judge in the case from dismissing the charges.

The defendants now face the minor charge of failing to declare cash at the border; even if found guilty, they stand to get the money back.

The dramatic turn of events raises fresh questions about the state of Albania’s justice system even after years of reform efforts nudged along by the European Union and the United States.

“Prosecutors had no proof except for the 3.4 million euros,” Radovan Cela, a lawyer for three of the defendants, including Vladi, told BIRN. “Judge Fran Prendi’s decision was one of the best I ever read.”

The itinerary of the trailer Bizark from Albania to Belgium.

He said of Rizzatto: “I see Carlo as a credible man.”

Chief suspect disappeared

On June 25, 2018, Albanian police announced the seizure of 3.4 million euros in cash of various currencies, hidden in two Toyota Auris cars.

Intriguingly, four days before the seizure, the leader of Albania’s opposition Democratic Party, Lulzim Basha, told parliament that a “Toyota Yaris” full of “drug money” had been found and accused a senior MP of the ruling Socialist Party, Taulant Balla, of involvement. Balla sued Basha for defamation and, in the first instance verdict, won.

In the meantime, prosecutors Doloreza Musabelliu and Ened Nakuci registered a penal investigation with the office of the Serious Crime Prosecutors.

Belgian and German authorities delivered scores of documents to Albania, where prosecutors eventually charged 39-year-old Vladi and his cousins, 33-year-old Alfred Vladi, with creating an organisation for the purpose of money laundering. The men remained at large.

Four others – Eduart Cani, the owner of the car hauler carrying the cars, his son Klevi Cani, Alban Mollaymeri, the owner of the car repair firm in Tirana that paid the customs duties for the cars, and a driver called Agim Ceka – were arrested.

Investigators say preparations for the transfer began in April 2018, when Elvis Vladi left Albania via Kosovo accompanied by another person with previous criminal links. On June 12, Alfred Vladi contacted Cani in Tirana regarding the transportation of several used cars from Belgium.

Cani, who at the time was under house arrest on suspicion of domestic violence, ordered his son, Klevi, and the driver Ceka, to go to Belgium. They left the next day in a hauler named ‘Bizark’ and arrived in the city of Charleroi, 60 kilometres south of Brussels, on June 16.

They picked up nine cars, stopping just over the German border in the spa city of Aachen where export papers were prepared.

The cars arrived by ferry to Durres, where the police discovered the cash.

Prosecutors identified Elvis Vladi as the ringleader. He returned to Albania by plane on June 22, after the cars began the journey from Belgium. Prosecutors believe he had come back to wait for the cash, but when police went looking for him Vladi disappeared.

Vladi, who judging by the court documents split his time between Albania and Belgium, had a previous scrape with the law in 2015 when he and a number of other Albanians were arrested in London after UK police infiltrated an alleged drugs gang and seized 16 kg of cocaine. Vladi was found not guilty in 2016.

‘I know nothing about this’

In March 2019, some nine months after Vladi’s disappearance, the Serious Crime Prosecution in Tirana received a copy of an agreement signed by Vladi and a man named Bledar Fejzo, a representative of a firm called BHF Consulting, dated April 3, 2018 and concerning the purchase of a plot of land at Seman beach in the municipality of Fier on the Albanian coast.

Seman is an undeveloped strip of coastline notorious for decades of pollution by the local petroleum industry.

On March 9, 2019, Vladi, a wanted man, issued a statement via a notary claiming he had been engaged in an honest business transaction. His lawyers delivered the statement to prosecutors.

Days later, Rizzatto told his story to the police officer and prosecutors.

Rizzatto produced a bank statement which he said proved he had deposited the money in his own

account 12 years earlier as the proceeds of legitimate business activities at “Friedrich STR 29, in Germany”.

This is highly unlikely, according to BIRN’s findings.

Rizzatto is indeed registered in Germany as director of a company called Gerber Consulting GmbH, operating out of Friedrichstrasse 29 in the northern German town of Iserlohn. But according to the German Business Registry, he has only been registered as such since February 19 last year, when the company changed its name and address.

The company was originally founded by Turkish citizen Durmus Acikgoz in 2014 and was sold in February 2019 to Khathinda Gerber, who nominated Rizzatto as director.

Its balance sheet shows assets of just 33,000 euros and paid capital of 100,000 when it was sold in February 2019.

BIRN also found holes in the land purchase part of Rizzatto’s story.

Fejzo of BHF Consulting testified in November 2019 that he acted as an intermediary in an agreement between his client, the Vrioni family as owners of the plot at Seman beach, and Vladi.

However, the Vrioni family, descendants of the largest landowners in Albania before World War Two, denied any knowledge of an offer to buy their land.

BIRN contacted Fejzo, who said he was ready to show this reporter the purchase agreement. But when this

Illustration: Jurgena Tahiri/BIRN. Photo: Belgian Police/Elvis Vladi

reporter called again to arrange a meeting, Fejzo never picked up.

Janaq Jorgo, a representative of the Vrioni family, told BIRN, “I know nothing about this.”

“The lawyer [Fejzo] hasn’t told me about this. Many have looked at that land. He [Fejzo] can’t have considered it serious if he hasn’t told me about it.”

Asked about the discrepancies in Rizzatto’s story, Vladi’s lawyer, Cela, told BIRN:

“My client told me Carlo gave [the money] to him while Carlo says he has bank statements to prove that. This is my duty as defence lawyer. I cannot investigate Carlo because I have no jurisdiction to do that.”

“Even we didn’t have this alibi, it is the prosecutors who should provide proof based on the Penal Procedural Code and not raise charges based on doubts.”

Charges withdrawn

On September 23, 2019, prosecutors decided to forward the case to court despite still waiting on the translation of information from Belgium and Italy.

The then head of the Serious Crimes Prosecution, Donika Prela, cited time constraints given security measures imposed on the defendants were expiring. Prosecutors had sufficient evidence, Prela argued.

Judge Prendi disagreed.

After a short visit to serious crime prosecutors, Rizzatto left Albania the same day, mission accomplished: Within the year, moneylaundering charges against Vladi and four others had been dropped, as one of Albania’s most sensational criminal cases of recent years unraveled.

While the prosecutors argued that the defendants would have wired the money had everything been above board, defence lawyers said their clients were ordinary businessmen dealing in used cars and that only Elvis Vladi knew about the money. Vladi, they said, should be accused of failing to declare the cash at the border, while the other four should be released from all charges.

Prendi ruled the investigation incomplete, saying prosecutors had failed to identify the offence, whether in Albania or abroad, from which the alleged laundered money came.

“If we don’t have a penal offence or a criminal activity to produce criminal proceeds, we cannot have the penal offence of laundering proceeds from crime,” the judge said.

Prendi ordered prosecutors to translate the material received from Belgium, Germany and Italy and to look for any indication of criminal activity in these countries.

Prendi also noted Rizzatto’s story, which he said prosecutors had failed to confirm or dismiss, and ordered them to look into it. He told them to interview Fejzo and the owners of the land that Vladi had supposedly agreed to buy.

The prosecutors returned to Prendi on December 10, 2019, but only with Fejzo’s account, which supported Rizzatto’s story.

The material from abroad “had not provided new data regarding the investigation,” they said. Interviewing the Vrioni family would not be necessary, the prosecutors argued, since Fejzo had told them Jorgo had “no knowledge about the conversation he conducted with Elvis Vladi”.

The prosecutors threw in the towel, saying the charges should be changed since they had been unable to complete an investigation that would support the accusation of money laundering. All five defendants currently stand accused of failing to declare cash at the border, punishable with a fine or a prison sentence of up to two years. The change of charge could prove very lucrative.

“If the money is not declared, that doesn’t mean that it is the proceeds of a crime,” Cela, the defence lawyer, said. “If there is no penal offence, the money should be returned to the rightful owner.”