EXCLUSIVE The Albanian mafia fuelling Britain's drug-driving epidemic: How Eastern European Narcos are flooding the UK with £4bn of cocaine - and the heartbreaking consequences

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

Mown down in front of her mother during a morning stroll through Manchester, she's one of the youngest victims of Britain's drug-driving epidemic.
Three-year-old Louisa 'Lulu' Palmisano was struck by a van driven by Rawal Rehman, who had at least 20 lines of cocaine in his system after visiting two massage parlours.
Jailed this week for 12 years, the 36-year-old courier is the sordid face of a growing menace, with drug-related road deaths rising by 164 per cent in less than a decade.
That cocaine rivals cannabis as the most common drug involved should be of no surprise. After all, it is now cheaper and stronger than ever.
The criminals behind this dubious achievement? The Albanian mafia - whose 'supermarket-style' tactics of buying in bulk in return for a smaller cut on sales have helped them seize control of the UK's cocaine market.
So just how widespread is Britain's cocaine problem, what damage is it causing, and what are the names and faces of the kingpins fuelling it?
Answering the first question is easy: cocaine is now, in the words of one expert, 'ubiquitous'.
Snorting 117 tonnes (and rising...) every year, the UK has the world's second highest rate of cocaine use after Australia.
Lulu was hit while walking alongside her mother on a Saturday morning in central Manchester
Gangs make around £4 billion a year selling the drug in the UK, according to the National Crime Agency (NCA). For context, the annual revenues of the entire British publishing industry were £7.1 billion in 2023.
Professor Ian Hamilton, a leading narcotics expert who serves as associate professor of addiction at the University of York, said increasing cocaine use inevitably meant more people were driving while under the influence of it.
And while politicians decrying cocaine use typically recite worn stereotypes about it being a 'middle-class' drug snorted at suburban dinner parties, the academic believes this model is now completely out of date.
'Cocaine is stronger and more affordable than it's ever been,' he told MailOnline. 'It was previously seen as a drug for affluent people, but that's no longer the case - almost everyone can afford it and it's easy to get hold of.
'When a drug grows in popularity, more people will drive under the influence of it. Cocaine works quickly but wears off quickly too. So, people won't be high so they think they can drive but may still be impaired and have longer response times.'
He credits Britain's binge drinking culture as one reason for cocaine's popularity, with its stimulating effects helping partygoers and clubbers carry on drinking for longer.
But using cocaine is far from risk free, with deaths linked to the drug hitting 1,118 in 2023 - up by 30 per cent compared to the year before.
The NCA have also blamed cocaine for fuelling domestic violence, and disputes between gangs peddling the drug are frequently a factor behind stabbings, kidnappings and murders.
Police credit the Albanian mafia's takeover of the UK cocaine market with a decision taken decades ago to forge direct links with South American cartels. By cutting out middlemen, they can secure larger volumes of the drug at a cheaper price.
The Albanians are also said to have forged close links with the Italian 'Ndrangheta, which dominates the cocaine market in mainland Europe, while gaining a reputation for professionalism and reliability.
Professor Hamilton believes the increasing purity and affordability of cocaine is a deliberate strategy by organised crime groups to make their product as attractive as possible to consumers.
'Organised crime groups work on the same principles of supermarkets - they'd rather shift a lot of something and make a little profit than a little and not make as much,' he said.
'They want to make sure their product is popular and well used.'
The narcotics expert also pointed to factors further down the supply chain in South America, where he said authorities have eased off efforts to eradicate coca plantations.
'Under President Bush that was a priority so there was a lot of pressure from the US, but Biden and Trump are more focused on immigration,' he explained.
Although top-tier cocaine traffickers tend to shy away from the limelight, some are so notorious that their names have become widely known.
These include Dritan Rexhepi, nicknamed the 'King of Cocaine', who was finally extradited back to Albania earlier in January after 27 years on the run.
The kingpin was responsible for trafficking tens of millions of pounds worth of cocaine into the UK and other European countries, and appeared on the Met's most wanted list in 2023.
He is said to have been leader of an international drug cartel called Kompanio Bello and is believed to be responsible for shooting dead two police officers in his homeland in 1999.
But Albanians are far from the only nationality involved.
One recent 'big fish' busted by police was Jamie 'The Iceman' Stevenson, who was one of Britain's most wanted men before he was locked up earlier this year.
The 59-year-old, once described as Scotland's answer to Tony Soprano, arranged for £76million of cocaine to be smuggled into Britain inside boxes of bananas from Ecuador before the operation was exposed by decrypted EncroChat messages.
Stevenson planned for the shipment of 952 blocks of cocaine to be sent to a Glasgow fruit merchant before it was intercepted by Border Force in 2020.
Just months before, police had raided a Kent Valium factory linked to the gangster, prompting him to flee to the Netherlands, where he was arrested in 2022. He was jailed for 20 years last October.
Bananas have been used to hide cocaine before, with officers uncovering 2.3 tonnes of the drug worth £186million in a cargo boat in Portsmouth harbour in 2021.
But in an undercover operation reminiscent of a Hollywood thriller, police kept the seizure a secret and replaced the cocaine with fruit before posing as lorry drivers to deliver it to the smugglers' warehouse in north London.
Armed police then arrested four of the gang during a swoop on the lock-up which uncovered a loaded revolver hidden on a roof beam as well as the electronic key flat to a flat in nearby Islington.
While the flat appeared to be empty, police went on to find another 33 kilo blocks of cocaine worth £2million hidden under kitchen cabinets.
Last year, Erik Muci, 45, was jailed for 33 years for leading the operation, while his fellow Albanian conspirators Bruno Kuci, 33, and Olsi Ebeja, 40, received 21 years and 17 years consecutively.
Petko Zhutev, a 39-year-old Bulgarian, was sentenced to 27 years and 33-year-old Italian Gjergji Diko, 33, to 18 years.
While hiding cocaine in sea freight is the most common method used by traffickers, other methods are used too, including submarines and aeroplanes.
One gang jailed earlier this year flew £4.2million worth of cocaine into the UK from France on small planes specially designed to evade radar.
These aircraft would take off from the coastal town of Cherbourg before flying 70 miles over the Channel to Dorset - avoiding radar by flying low and switching off their transponders - before jettisoning the packages over the countryside.
Tomas Bauza, 44, (left) and his 47-year-old brother Ronaldas (right) were also involved in the operation
The coordinates of the drop-off locations were agreed in advance, and gang leader Martynas Piecia, 37, or his associate, 47-year-old Lithuanian Rolandas Bauza, would be waiting in a car to pick the packages up.
Rolandas's brother Tomas Bauza, 44, made up the fourth member of the conspiracy, which organised at least three flights in total.
The drugs were then stashed at a car wash in the tiny hamlet of Spellbrook of Hertfordshire – to the horror of locals who had no idea it was being run by criminals.
While Britain's cocaine problem may appear to be spiralling out of control, authorities insist they are taking effective action.
Seizures of cocaine at the UK border have been rising steeply, with more than 26 tonnes seized by Border Force in England last year - a 75 per cent increase compared to 2023.
And to tackle the trade at source, the government has struck an agreement to station British officers in Colombia - the world's largest cocaine producer - and Ecuador, a key smuggling route.
But as the vast size of recent seizures show, the cocaine trade is currently in rude health, suggesting that cartel-related killings will continue to be a daily reality of life in both nations.
And with the UK's voracious hunger for cocaine making it 'the country of choice' for drug-peddlers, its impacts - like the heartbreaking drug-driving death of Lulu Palmisano - will continue to be felt here too.