A new BIRN documentary, The Impact of Money Laundering on Poverty, launched on Friday in Pristina, Kosovo, shows how organised crime uses money laundering to build “economic empires” that worsen poverty and income inequality.

Kreshnik Gashi, editor-in-chief of BIRN and Internews Kosova’s Albanian-language media outlet, KALLXO.com, which produced the film, said the documentary shows that money laundering has never delivered economic development, “but has only brought poverty and income disproportionality”.

” The documentary shows that citizens were forced to emigrate because crime destroyed their businesses. Citizens are having a hard time buying apartments and building houses, not because they are lazy, but because money laundering has increased their prices,” Gashi added.

Albulena Haxhiu, Kosovo’s outgoing Minister of Justice, said at the launch of the film that “the fight against corruption and organised crime is a battle for our future and we agree that corruption strikes at the foundations of our state.

“Organised crime uses corruption to penetrate the economy. Therefore, the government … has taken the necessary steps to combat these phenomena. In 2024, we extradited 32 people to ally countries and 45 were brought to face justice in Kosovo. This shows that Kosovo is not a haven for crime, but fights these phenomena,” Haxhiu declared.

She noted that the main challenge facing Kosovo is not being a member of key international organisations such as the Council of Europe, Interpol, Europol and Eurojust.

Blerim Isufaj, chief prosecutor at the Kosovo Special Prosecution Office, points out in the documentary that “while a member state of Europol receives information within one or two days, we wait up to one year”.

He adds that it is often difficult to bring suspects to justice because many “wanted individuals hide in Serbia or Spain” – countries that do not recognise Kosovo or cooperate with it.

Journalists, prosecutors and experts from Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro explain in the film how organised criminal groups in the Balkans collaborate on money laundering schemes.

One of their main fields is construction. The documentary notes how, “in a short period of time, entire cities were built without any clear explanations of the sources of funding”.

It goes on to explain how, in the lawless 1990s, “more than 20 criminal clans used the new legal vacuum to build their empires based on cocaine trafficking, tobacco smuggling, and human trafficking. With networks spread over several continents, these groups have generated billions of euros that have been invested in the economy of the region through sophisticated money-laundering schemes.”

The documentary links the increase in real estate prices in Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro with money laundering, as companies take advantage of construction business practices to “use criminal money to generate clean financial capital – which is then freely circulated through the banking system”.