"They invaded the cannabis market" / The Telegraph: What was revealed by the breakdown of Telegram messages

2024-09-28 21:00:00, Kronika CNA

"They invaded the cannabis market" / The Telegraph: What was revealed

The British media the telegraph has devoted an article to the phenomenon of bar houses in Britain and how Albanians became the main owners of this market and how the networks were discovered by breaking down Telegram messages.

Hundreds of Albanians who crossed the Channel in small boats have helped their drug gangs secure complete control of the cannabis market in Britain.

They are recruited as workers on illegal cannabis "farms" set up in rented houses or disused industrial buildings to produce crops worth up to £2 million, plants which can be grown and harvested in just 12 weeks.

The industrial scale of cannabis production has been revealed by an undercover investigation into a secret channel on the encrypted messaging service Telegram. It is used by more than 700 Albanians to share information on their cannabis operations.

Members of the group recount robberies where cannabis "farm" workers had their fingers cut off and the owners demanded a 5-fold share of the profits.

The British Crime Agency (NCA) said that the ruthless professionalism that Albanians have brought to the cultivation of cannabis has enabled them to displace the Vietnamese as Britain's main domestic suppliers of the drug.

Albanian gangs previously specializing in cocaine moved to cannabis because it was "very, very low risk".

It makes a good profit because demand is high, Britons consume 240 tonnes of the drug, worth £2.4 billion, a year, and it does not require dangerous cross-border transport because it is locally produced, according to the NCA.

The increase in the number of Albanians crossing the Channel in 2022, when 12,685 arrived in the UK in small boats, has ensured a ready supply of illegal workers skilled in the hydroponic technology required to grow plants in the darkrooms of houses where all the windows are placed.

This has led to increased police focus on domestic cannabis production. About 29 Albanians were convicted in July alone for illegal drug production. This was followed by another 24 Albanians who appeared before the courts in August.

Some 101 illegal Albanian immigrants were sentenced to more than 300 years in prison in three months late last year. Three-quarters of them were convicted of cannabis-related offenses across England and Wales on inland farms.

Police are concerned that Telegram has become a convenient platform for criminals. It has 900 million users, but only about 100 employees. Pavel Durov, Telegram's Russian-born founder, was arrested in France this summer for its alleged failure to combat the use of the service for crime, including the dissemination of child sexual abuse material.

The Albanian channel is called Kusho, which means "cousin" and is the nickname Albanians call each other. There are currently 703 members sharing information on how to produce the maximum amount of cannabis from seed to grown plants.

"The majority of cannabis house robberies are happening in Leicester. They cut the fingers of an Albanian worker", said a member of the group.

"The police are not the big problem," said a London-based Albanian using the pseudonym Deni.

"The main problem is robbers who are now using drones to identify houses. They detect the heat from the plants through the roofs of the houses.”

Others complained that landlords were charging them for the use of their properties or demanding a cut of the profits.

“Landlords are paying £4,000 a month for a house. It's not worth it at all," said one.

A judge who handed down sentences for some of the arrested Albanians said that the authorities should look at the rental housing sector, noting that while the so-called cannabis "farmers" often appeared in court, the owners and others who received money from the rental of properties that were used for growing operations, rarely did this. - the telegraph wrote, among other things, in the article.