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How Albanian small boat migrants took over Britain’s cannabis market
    #28967617 - 09/30/24 01:06 PM (3 days, 4 hours ago)

How Albanian small boat migrants took over Britain’s cannabis market
September 28, 2024 - The Telegraph

Quote:

Drug gangs recruiting hundreds of compatriots arriving across Channel to work for multimillion-pound operations


Albanian migrants are recruited as workers in illegal cannabis ‘farms’ set up in rented houses or disused industrial buildings

Hundreds of Albanians who crossed the Channel on small boats have helped their drug gangs secure a stranglehold on Britain’s cannabis market.

They have been recruited as workers in illegal cannabis “farms” set up in rented houses or disused industrial buildings to produce crops worth up to £2 million a time and which can be grown and harvested in as little as 12 weeks.

The industrial scale of the 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 intelligence on their cannabis operations.

Conversations between members of the group centre on the best chemicals for plant growth, the most effective way to harvest cannabis plants, the economics of securing properties for drug production and why crossbows are better than guns to defend their crops from rival gangs.

Members of the group recount robberies where cannabis “farm” workers have had their fingers cut off and landlords have demanded five-figure shares of the profits.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) said that the ruthless professionalism that the Albanians have brought to cannabis farming has enabled them to displace the Vietnamese as the main domestic providers of the drug in Britain.

Albanian gangs who previously specialised in cocaine moved into cannabis because it was “very, very low-risk”.

It turns a good profit because of high demand – Britons consume 240 tonnes of the drug, worth £2.4 billion, a year – and does not require risky cross-border transportation because it is homegrown, according to the NCA.

The surge in Albanians crossing the Channel in 2022, when 12,685 reached the UK in small boats, has provided the ready supply of illegal workers, skilled in the hydroponic technology required to grow the plants in the darkened rooms of houses where all the windows have been sealed.

It has led to increasing focus by police on the domestic production of cannabis. Some 29 Albanians were sentenced in July alone for illegally producing the drug. That was followed by a further 24 Albanians appearing before the courts in August. That represents nearly one a day.

Some 101 illegal Albanian migrants were sentenced to more than 300 years in jail in three months at the end of last year. Three-quarters of them were convicted of offences linked to cannabis production across England and Wales in indoor farms.

Many of the illegal migrants were recruited by the gangs after a government crackdown on black economy work made it difficult for them to find jobs.

Fines for bosses who employ illegal migrants have tripled to up to £60,000 per worker to make the practice so economically damaging that it could “put them out of business”.

Police are concerned that Telegram has become a go-to platform for criminals. It has 900 million users but only about 100 employees. Pavel Durov, Telegram’s Russian-born founder, was detained in France this summer over its alleged failure to fight the use of the service for crime, including the spread of child sex abuse material.

The Albanians’ channel goes under the name Kusho, which means “cousin” and is the nickname Albanians use to address each other.

It currently has 703 members who share information about how to produce the maximum amount of cannabis from seed to full-grown plant.

Posts on the channel were collected by an Albanian reporter who infiltrated the group. “Everyone, you need to know how to grow ‘roses’,” said one of the organisers of the channel.

Another member listed the six key chemicals that had proved the most effective for fast, healthy growth.

One video demonstrated the best way to trim the dead leaves from a cannabis plant, while one member, using the pseudonym Bushi06, offered cannabis seedlings for £5 and boasted that he had sold 700 so far.

In discussions on how to protect the “farms”, one Albanian explained that it was better to spend £337 on a high-powered crossbow than a gun, because being caught in possession would carry a lesser sentence.

Some appeared less worried about police discovering their illegal operations than being attacked and robbed by rival gangs.

“Most robberies in the cannabis houses are happening in Leicester. They cut off the fingers of an Albanian worker,” said one member of the group.

“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 the houses. They detect the heat from the plants through the roofs of the houses.”

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

“London landlords are charging £4,000 a month for a house. Not worth it at all,”  said one.

Another said: “So far I have invested £31,000 in a house including 12K for sealing it up, and 12K for the lights. Do not know if I will get my money back. The agency who rented me the house are asking for £9,000 when the product is ready for harvesting.”

Last summer, police launched Operation Mille to target cannabis farms in the UK. Among those jailed was Nard Nidri, 34, who entered the UK illegally in 2022 and lived in Birmingham, then moved to Swansea, where he worked at a car wash, before being recruited for a cannabis farm.

He was one of four “gardeners” jailed for a combined total of six years in August after police arrested them at a property in Neath, south Wales. Two rooms and the attic had been adapted and insulated to grow plants with a street value of £85,000.

Sentencing them, Judge Geraint Walters said cannabis farms being run by Albanian criminal gangs had reached “epidemic levels” and had, in his judgment, “become something of an industry”.

He suggested that authorities should look at the rental housing sector, noting that while so-called cannabis “farmers” often appeared in court, landlords and others receiving money from the rent of properties being used for the growing operations rarely did so.




--------------------
“To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wildflower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.”

— Auguries of Innocence, William Blake

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