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The stranglehold Albanian gangs have gained over Britain’s drug trade has been well documented – but their domination is not complete.
Criminals from the Balkan nation are acknowledged by police to exert ‘considerable control’ over the supply of narcotics flowing into the country after undercutting their rivals with lower prices and gaining a reputation as ‘people you can do business with’.
But despite their growing power among the upper echelons of UK organised crime, rival groups continue to exert influence over specific markets and territories.
Ranging from Pakistani heroin traffickers in Birmingham and Turkish cocaine peddlers in north London to the old-school mob bosses of Glasgow, these criminal factions form a volatile cocktail of competing interests that regularly explodes into violence.
While the latest NCA research from 2017 found UK gangsters were 70 per cent British born and 60 per cent white, the existence of gangs united by a shared ethnicity should be of no surprise given the importance of family networks and international connections to organised criminality.
Gary Carroll is a specialist in UK organised crime and drug supply who’s consultancy, Claymore Advisory Group, has contributed expert testimony to more than 1000 criminal cases.
Reflecting on the growing power of Albanian kingpins, he told MailOnline: ‘If you asked me five years ago it was much easier to link certain drugs to certain demographics, but just as all roads lead to Rome everything now seems to lead to Albanian crime networks.’
Even so, the former West Midlands Police officer identified a number of groups that have managed to hold their own in Britain’s ever-changing organised crime landscape.
Pakistani heroin traffickers
More than 300,000 people are addicted to heroin and crack cocaine in England – and organised crime groups are more than happy to meet this demand.
Pakistani gangs are responsible for much of the heroin imported into the UK, with the West Midlands serving as a hub for the miserable trade.
‘In court cases we talk about Birmingham being a port for international consignments of heroin coming into the UK, with much of it arriving via air freight,’ said Gary Carroll.
Arfan Mirza, a 42-year-old man from Birmingham, was convicted in 2023 of smuggling £22million worth of heroin into the UK
Mirza smuggled the drug through UK airports in boxes of plastic carrier bags (pictured)
A web of 59 properties was linked to the group of heroin dealers in east Birmingham and seized by the NCA. There is no suggestion the homes have any connection with criminality now
‘The reason Birmingham is such a hive for the heroin trade is the strong familial links between people from countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh and what they speak of as ”back home”, where the level of corruption among customs, border agents is much higher than in the UK.
‘The Pakistanis have a strong hold in the heroin trade, so much so that Albanian organised crime groups don’t tend to get involved with heroin, which is quite unique.
‘That really emphasises the chokehold that the Pakistani community has over heroin.
‘If you go to Luton, Bradford and Huddersfield you’ll see a strong element of heroin distribution too.’
Arfan Mirza, a 42-year-old man from Birmingham, was convicted in 2023 of smuggling £22million worth of heroin in boxes of plastic carrier bags through UK airports.
Last year, West Midlands Police smashed one of Britain’s biggest county lines drugs gangs which made £1.2million a year.
West Midlands Police released dramatic video footage of the moment a county lines heroin and crack cocaine gang were arrested
Members of a gang who ran a county lines operation that made £1.2million a year selling heroin and crack cocaine. One of their members, Anees Mahmood (bottom row, second from left), was arrested at Birmingham Airport in September having fled to Pakistan
A dozen gangsters have been handed sentences totalling more than 100 years for running the organised crime group, which sold vast amounts of heroin and crack cocaine.
Dramatic footage shows the moment police burst into their homes in a series of dawn raids, with the once all-powerful kingpins seen bleary-eyed as they are pulled from their beds while still in their underwear.
One of their members, Anees Mahmood, was arrested at Birmingham Airport in September having fled to Pakistan.
The gang all lived in Birmingham and included people of various different ethnicities.
North London’s Turkish mafia
Local street gangs claiming ‘turf’ based on postcodes are responsible for much of London’s knife crime epidemic.
While Albanian gangs increasingly dominate the large-scale importation of the drugs that these gangs go on to sell, a number of other organised groups are still operating in the capital.
Among them are Turkish gangsters, who Mr Carroll has found rarely travel further north.
Huseyin (left) and Abdullah (right), who founded the London-based Turkish Bombacilar gang alongside their brother, Mehmet
A nine-year-old girl was shot in the head in the crossfire from a targeted shooting outside this cafe in Hackney last year
‘The Turks are still about and do very well in London,’ he said. ‘What I find unusual is the Turks haven’t migrated north very much. They tend to be solely in London.
‘In Birmingham, the second city, we have very little Turkish influence. Then the further north you go it’s near nil.
‘They’ll always be the money laundering element – like Turkish barbers – but even those are controlled by Albanians outside of London.’
The three Baybasin brothers, Huseyin, Abdullah and Mehmet, founded the Hackney-based Bombacilar gang and used to control much of Britain’s heroin and cocaine trade before serving long prison sentences for drug trafficking.
A feud between the Bombacilars and a rival group, the Tottenham Turks, is believed to have led to the shooting of a nine-year-old girl at a restaurant in Hackney on 29 May last year.
The girl, who has been left permanently disabled, was shot in the head by bullets fired from a motorcycle-riding hitman that were reportedly intended for members of the Bombacilars.
The motorcycle thought to be involved in the shooting at the Hackney shooting
Tottenham Turks leader Izzet Eren (pictured), who was shot and killed sitting outside a cafe in Chisinau, Moldova last summer
There have been more than 35 major flare-ups between the two groups – including 20 shootings and numerous murders in past two decades.
An international manhunt is currently underway for the killer of a senior member of the Tottenham Turks, Izzet Eren, who was shot and killed sitting outside a cafe in Chisinau, Moldova last summer.
Rival crime boss Kemal Armagan, of the Hackney Bombers, is thought to be connected to his death and is already wanted for two other murders.
Glasgow and Liverpool crime families
The ‘thug in a suit’ model of urban organised crime represented by figures like the Kray Twins may loom large in the popular imagination, but has largely died out.
Peter Walsh, author of Drug War: The Secret History, previously told MailOnline that Merseyside was one of the few territories Albanian crime bosses have been unable to muscle into, explaining that drug supply there ‘has always been dominated by well established crime groups who have strong links across communities’.
Gary Carroll said one model of gangland organisation, represented by the crime family, still held sway in some areas such as Glasgow – but ‘even they have to deal with the Albanians now’.
Steven Lyons – a senior member of the Lyons crime family – pictured outside the High Court in Glasgow
The Lyons have a decades-long rivalry with the rival Daniel gang. Pictured is the Daniel family’s late boss, Jamie
Robert Daniel nephew of Jamie Daniel, was gunned down outside his home in Honeywell Court, Stepps, in 2017
‘There are always going to be organised crime families in some areas,’ he said.
‘However, while they might bring shipments of drugs from abroad, somewhere back in that crime chain there is highly likely to be an Albanian influence somewhere.
‘The Albanians aren’t interested in street supply or selling one or two kilos here or there, they’d much rather sell hundreds.’
Two major Glasgow crime families, the Lyons and Daniels, have been locked in a feud believed to date back to 2001, when a £20,000 batch of cocaine disappeared from a Daniel safe house.
Bags of cocaine that Liverpool couple Sian Banks, 25, and Eddie Burton, 23, tried to bring into the UK
Steven Lyons has previously been linked in news reports to the Kinahan Organised Crime Group – which began in Dublin and is now thought to be one of the world’s most powerful criminal groups.
Both families ‘still do well,’ according to Mr Carroll, who says that while the city is getting increasingly cosmopolitan ‘it’s still a very white Scottish dominated marketplace’.
He added: ‘They won’t get muscled out by the Albanians but the Albanians will become more common.’
Polish amphetamine/ecstasy smugglers
While Albanians may have cornered the market for cocaine and cannabis, other drugs remain in the hands of criminals from elsewhere in Europe.
Eastern European gangs, particularly from Poland, ‘dominate’ the UK’s supply of amphetamines and ecstasy, according to Mr Carroll.
He described Britain’s near neighbour the Netherlands as a ‘sorting hub’ for drugs coming from the east, while also being a major base for production.
Tomasz Dimitruk-Kot, 25, a member of a Polish drugs gang who smuggled £2million worth of ecstasy and cocaine into Britain
‘One of the only other areas we find Albanians don’t get involved in is amphetamines like speed, as well as ecstasy,’ he said.
‘It is mainly eastern European gangs who have the hold on it.
‘In my own experience Poland is big and there’s also a huge market in Czech Republic and fleetingly in Slovakia and Hungary,’ he said.
‘But the Netherlands is a transit hub – almost like a sorting office for this whole market. The drugs are sorted there and posted to the UK, but lots are made there too.’
Ecstasy is often smuggled through UK ‘roll-on, roll-off’ ferry ports, mainly in the South East, especially Dover.
A five-strong Polish drugs gang who smuggled £2million worth of ecstasy and cocaine into Britain were jailed for almost 50 years in 2021.
A handgun, 24 rounds of ammunition, 220 ecstasy tablets and 126 grams of cocaine was also found in a car
Packages of drugs that were seized by police from the Polish drugs gang
Undercover officers watched Damian Masalski, 25, and Roman Lada, 53, meet at a M11 service station and exchange money, before £500,000 was found stashed in Lada’s lorry.
Officers went on to find £962,000 worth of ecstasy in the home of one of their associates. A handgun, 24 rounds of ammunition, 220 ecstasy tablets and 126 grams of cocaine were also found in a car.
Another member of the conspiracy was Tomasz Dimitruk-Kot, 25, who was seized alongside two other criminals with 12 kilos of cocaine worth £960,000 and £85,000 in cash.
