Influential Albanian Politician Led Organized Crime Group in Australia, Intelligence Reports Claim

Tom Doshi, a powerful Albanian businessman and politician tied to the country’s prime minister, is suspected of leading an organized criminal group implicated in money laundering, drug trafficking, and other offenses in Australia, according to confidential intelligence assessments.

This clan is among others from Shkodër, a county in northwest Albania, that have systematically abused Australia’s immigration system to build “an entire Albanian Organized Crime criminal structure” across South Australia, according to the reports.

The documents, produced by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) and circulated to domestic and foreign police agencies, draw on numerous reports from local police forces and information from foreign law enforcement bodies. They were seen by reporters from OCCRP and Australia’s The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers.

The files describe how, since 2000, Albanian clans have used identity fraud and familial links to migration agents to move their people into Australia, setting up cells in Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth, and elsewhere.

Doshi is described in the files as the “head” of a syndicate “principally consisting of his extended family.” Though the documents contain no details about his specific activities, they note that eight of his relatives have been “implicated” in “drug and money laundering investigations,” in some cases as “primary targets.” His relatives are said in the reports to have gained Australian visas using spurious documentation. One is facing drug trafficking charges.

Doshi, who spent years in both countries, has not been charged with any crimes in Australia. In his homeland, he had built a business empire that has benefited extensively from state contracts. He was designated persona non grata by the United States in 2018 for “involvement in significant corruption” and forced out of his parliamentary seat in 2021 following years of high-profile scandals. His alleged involvement in the Australian criminal network has never been previously revealed.

“I have never in my life been involved in any way with drug smuggling, human trafficking, arms trafficking, money laundering, or illegal immigration in Australia, or Albania, or anywhere else,” Doshi wrote in response to reporters’ questions. “In fact, as a Member of the Albanian Parliament, I have been a strong supporter of the fight against these types of activities.”

“I have no connection to any Albanian ‘criminal clans’ based in Australia, or to any Albanian criminals anywhere,” he wrote. “My siblings and their children total 33. I have little to no contact with them other than to encounter them at funerals or family celebrations.”

‘They Like to Dominate’

Albanian criminal groups are highly active in the drug trade in the United Kingdom, Italy, and many other countries on multiple continents.

Their well-organized and systemic operations in Australia highlights the threat posed by their international expansion.

Among their chief skills, current and former law enforcement officers say, is taking advantage of immigration rules to smuggle their members into the countries in which they operate.

“Often applicants will apply for a particular visa knowing it will be rejected,” one of the Australian intelligence files reads, “but [they] exploit the lengthy appeal process so they can generate evidence to support a different visa application.”

“They’ve got facilitators, professional facilitators, to assist them, whether it’s through visa migration issues, legal or other means,” said Victoria Police Commander Paul O’Halloran. “They’re very adept.”

Albanian gangsters in Australia “can show extreme violence,” O’Halloran said, and they are regarded by his detectives as “highly dangerous.”

Tony Saggers, a former high-ranking officer in Britain’s National Crime Agency, has spent years on the trail of Albanian criminals.

“They put a lot of emphasis on being respected for what they do, and for doing it well," he said of their involvement in the drug trade. "And just doing it isn’t enough for them. They like to dominate by gaining control of volume activity, proving they’re the best, and satisfying customer demand.”

A Criminal ‘Life Cycle’

The Australian intelligence documents seen by reporters outline what they call Albanian organized criminal groups’ five-stage “life cycle.”

First, they say, people are recruited in their home regions in Albania, sometimes on the false promise of finding work abroad. Second, they are brought into the country using false visa claims and fraudulent documents. Third, they manage to remain in Australia by taking advantage of lengthy visa reviews and trusted registered migration agents (some Albanians apply to stay in Australia by claiming that blood feuds back home would endanger them if they returned). Fourth, they carry out criminal activities. Fifth, they are arrested, convicted, and their visas are canceled.

Shkodër is identified as an epicenter from which many of these criminal groups originate, with five out of seven South Australian ACIC investigations between 2015 and 2020 featuring a “primary target” from the Albanian county.

Doshi, a political kingmaker in Shkodër, appears in the documents as the alleged leader of an organized crime group made up of his extended relatives referred to as the “Doshi family syndicate.” Investigators believe the clan engages in money laundering and exploits Australia’s migration system to facilitate its criminal activities.

Members of the clan, the documents say, were placed by Australian officials on an Albanian organized crime “persons of interest list.” This list was then shared with law enforcement agencies in multiple European countries. The document suggests that these agencies identified members of the Doshi clan on the list from their own investigations.

The documents also include a “case study” that describes a woman with “familial links to Doshi” working as a “registered migration agent” in Australia who “likely facilitates [criminal] activity by achieving migration outcomes for syndicate members arrested for cannabis cultivation and/or are closely connected to cocaine trafficking.”

The files do not mention any criminal allegations against the woman, and indicate that there are no “grounds to cancel [her] registration [as a migration agent] on the basis of criminal intelligence surrounding members of her immediate family.”

The files go into greater detail about two of Doshi’s nephews. The two men are said to be members of the Lleshi drug trafficking syndicate, a gang named after another family which, the documents say, uses funds from cannabis grow-house sales to import cocaine and meth into Australia.

Police arrested one of Doshi’s nephews in Adelaide in March 2022 and charged him with drug trafficking and money laundering after finding cocaine worth AU$1.6 million concealed inside a smoke machine.

The nephew had started visiting Europe frequently after acquiring Australian citizenship almost a decade earlier, the intelligence files say. Along the way, he and his family bought up expensive Australian properties, raising questions for investigators about his income. Court officials did not respond to questions about the current status of the case.

Doshi's other nephew is no longer in Australia, but is suspected to still be involved in Albanian organized crime and high-level drug trafficking. He, too, has had numerous brushes with the law. According to his Australian immigration case file seen by reporters, he has a history of criminal convictions in the country dating back to 2012. The file cites a minister who rejected his visa application as saying: “I reasonably suspect that [he] has been or is a member of a group or organization … involved in criminal conduct."

Back in Albania, he was accused in 2016 of assaulting a traffic police officer. The officer declined to press charges, and the outcome of the case is unknown.

Doshi’s Rise

Though the Australian allegations against Doshi are new, he has long been a controversial figure in his homeland. He made a fortune in the pharmaceutical and construction industries and enjoyed high-level political ties. But his career has been marked by violence, encounters with the law, and accusations of corruption.

In a 2009 embassy cable published by WikiLeaks, a U.S. diplomat serving in Albania included Doshi at the top of a list of legislators “with ties to organized crime,” describing him as “the richest MP” in the country and adding that he was “suspected of trafficking narcotics.”

Doshi’s first known encounter with the law took place in his early 20s. In 1990, while performing his mandatory military service, he was handed a one-year prison term for disorderly conduct after a drunken brawl in the coastal city of Durrës ended in one of his group stabbing a man.

The conviction didn’t hamper Doshi’s rise. By the mid-1990s, he had broken into the construction and fuel sectors as Albania underwent a rapid transition to free-market capitalism.

Doshi established a home in Australia in 1997, buying multiple properties in the southern city of Adelaide and living between the two countries for a number of years. It was during this period that he allegedly put in place the criminal syndicate identified by Australian investigators.

But he remained active in his homeland. His career took its biggest leap in 2000 when his firm Aldosch Sh.p.k. won tenders to buy two major state-run companies in the dairy and pharmaceutical sectors.

Teuta Shamku, a longtime business journalist at Albanian Public Television, describes this victory as a “surprise,” particularly since Aldosch was allowed to privatize two companies operating in very different areas.

Moreover, Aldosch was not a big name in Albanian business at the time. “They were unknown,” Shamku said of Doshi’s firm. “The activity of this company was a bit of an enigma.”

In response to reporters’ questions, Doshi wrote that these purchases “were the result of a public privatization process with open bidding. I made the highest bid in each case. There was no favoritism involved.”

Meanwhile, Doshi became active in politics. He secured his first term in parliament in 2005 as a candidate with the socialists, one of Albania’s major political parties, to represent his native city of Shkodër.

In a scandalous, widely-reported incident three years later, Doshi allegedly assaulted a journalist who asked for an interview about his allegedly fake university diploma. A U.S. embassy cable from the time described how bystanders in the hotel cafe, perhaps cowed by Doshi’s known violent streak, simply let the attack happen.

The journalist did not press charges, and Doshi’s political rise continued unabated. In 2009, a U.S. embassy cable cited a disgruntled Socialist MP who complained that Doshi — whom he called a “thug” — had won leverage over the head of the party, Edi Rama, after investing half-a-million euros into its recent parliamentary campaign.

The socialists did not win that year. But in the next election in 2013, their improved performance in Shkodër helped them secure a national victory — and once more placed local power-player Doshi in a position of influence.

Fatos Lubonja, an Albanian writer and political commentator, described Doshi as a powerful ally for the Socialist Party "for both Shkodër and Tirana elections," referring to two politically important regions.

“For many years, [Doshi] has been one of the most important allies of the ruling party of Edi Rama, a party that works for and with a minority [of Albanians].”

But Doshi’s rise was not without its troubles.

His Australia visa was canceled on character grounds in 2015 and he is not known to have ever been in the country since. The latest publicly available documents show that a 2020 appeal by Doshi to overturn his visa cancellation has not been successful. He told reporters he continues to fight the decision and "is very much hoping for a positive outcome.” Australian Home Affairs officials did not respond to questions about Doshi's current status.

Back home, 2015 also saw him expelled from the Socialist Party after fighting with Rama over local political appointees. For years, Doshi and a parliamentary ally were under investigation for falsely claiming that the speaker of parliament had ordered Doshi’s assassination. Doshi was later found not guilty.

Also in 2015, the Albanian authorities charged Doshi with under-declaring his assets to the tune of 14 million euros in his official asset declarations between 2005 and 2013. But though investigators scrutinized mansions, warehouses, apartments, factories, and luxury cars in both Australia and Albania, he was found not guilty. A related set of money laundering charges to the tune of nine million euros was dropped.

The agency involved, known as HIDAACI, released a statement at the time saying violations involving Doshi had been found before that point, but “previous HIDAACI leaders kept them hidden.”

Meanwhile Doshi had gone on to become an independent MP and later chairman of a smaller party under whose banner he won his fourth parliamentary term in 2017.

The following year the United States sanctioned Doshi for “involvement in significant corruption,” and as the April 2021 elections neared, the growing pressure — including public statements by then-U.S. Ambassador Yuri Kim — finally forced him to resign. But he still wields considerable power. In videos posted on Facebook that year, as he declared support for Rama’s Socialist Party, he said its candidates were his own hand-picked choices.

In May 2021, the opposition requested that prosecutors open criminal proceedings against Doshi and an alleged associate for what they described as “election corruption” — which includes buying votes with cash or with other favors — and being part of a "structured criminal group.”

The case was sent to the capital of Tirana, where an investigation is ongoing — though prosecutors choose not to investigate Doshi and his associate specifically, focusing instead on the general phenomenon of vote-buying in Albania.

In response to requests for comment, Doshi’s alleged associate, Pëllumb Gjoka, said he had “absolutely no connection to Mr. Doshi, neither personal nor business, and … never engaged in vote-buying or voter intimidation.”

Gjoka was arrested in Albania on July 26, though the authorities have not yet announced the reason.

In response to reporters’ questions, Doshi said he has “never engaged in vote-buying – I don’t need to.” His supporters, he said, are loyal to him in part because of their admiration for his family.

He described his designation by the United States as a “tremendous shock” given his “unwavering support of the US-sponsored judicial reform and anti-corruption agenda” and said it was based on “false media rumors” planted by his political opponents.

He also volunteered that he had been “declared non grata and excluded from the U.K.,” where he said he is “currently pursuing judicial remedies.”

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Rama distanced his Socialist Party from Doshi.

Doshi’s newer party, he said, “has never been in coalition with the Socialist Party, neither at the central level nor at the local level.”

“Albania is a model country in terms of the new justice system it has built,” he added.

“Of course, Albania still has a lot to do and that is why it has opened membership negotiations with the European Union, to become a worthy country of the European family, continuing reforms and the fight against corruption and organized crime.”

Read this story in Albanian at Lapsi.al.