Vlora’s Fall into the Bed of Crime

By ARMAND SHKULLAKU

Albania, shaken by a string of scandals that have now gained international notoriety, is left today without the head of its most important national-security institution. Vlora Hyseni, chair of the State Intelligence Service since 2023, has been suspended from duty, declared wanted and placed under house arrest.

The secret service’s chief is suspected of placing herself at the service of organized crime — helping at least Ergys Agasi evade justice and putting state secrets at the disposal of a structured criminal group. With the capture of the State Intelligence Service by organized crime, Edi Rama has reached an unimaginable level of turning a state into a genuine criminal organization.

From using gangsters for votes when he was running for mayor 25 years ago, to today — when gangsters use the state in the service of crime — Edi Rama has carved a path that even the most powerful mafiosi on the planet would envy. Drug traffickers, murderers and rapists dressed in power and political immunity, who entered parliament and took over municipalities while annihilating the freedom of the vote. High official posts handed directly to members of criminal gangs. The looting, by law and without law, of hundreds of millions of euros from the state budget to feed both the monstrous machinery of vote theft and the personal estate of Surrel. Pieces of Albania distributed to “strategic mafiosi” who launder cocaine billions and walk openly with guns, just like in Escobar’s Colombia. The violent elimination, first and dirtiest, of the opposition, the media and civil society. A sheikh’s life with private jets, 33-thousand-euro wine, special treatments and NBA courtside seats. The shameless buying of diplomats, ambassadors, European officials and even the FBI’s counterintelligence chief… All of these, once seen as isolated phenomena of a corrupt and criminal regime, today form the complete picture of a mafia edifice, from foundation to roof, which is formally called the Republic of Albania.

In this project of turning the state into a pure ultra-mafia organization, the director could never have had this absolute success without the help of greedy collaborators who translated the power of 1 million votes in 2013 into a license to steal and plunder. The structured organization of the renaissance, in pyramidal form, copied the model of mafia clans where murderers and criminals are rewarded and those who refuse to become part of it are punished. It bought the services of a whole herd of neutered officials, mercenary journalists, amoral businessmen, insatiable diplomats and miserable opposition figures. Its power is so obvious that, even today when it is in decline, throughout the organization the code of silence reigns.

The fall of SHISH — and with it the myth of an intelligence service overseen by partner services — is the logical conclusion of Edi Rama’s “state.” If world history knows cases of such services being compromised by hostile foreign agents, in the Republic of Albania the Intelligence Service was captured by Gysi. Because Edi Rama’s state was never conceived nor run on law, rules and the democratic functioning of institutions. At its foundation was stealing Albania to steal votes, stealing votes to steal Albania, and annihilating every factor that would stand in the way of this project. Such a state cannot be run by a responsible government, an effective parliament and a dedicated administration. It remains in the hands of the head of the dome and the emissaries he delegates to carry out the dirty work.

Together with Vlora, all the alibis have fallen too — those that until today have tried to justify Edi Rama, his good intention to build a modern Albania, with the wickedness of his subordinates, the intrigues of his opponents, the speculations of types like Agasi, etc. Vlora is neither a pear nor a peach that someone eats behind the prime minister’s back. She is the most glaring illustration of how Edi Rama himself has placed the country’s institutions in the service of his power, which at its core is the power of crime. This time — as proof of the well-known axiom that regimes at their end are as tragic as they are comic — the power of crime put the institutions beneath it even in bed.

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