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'The red palace from the white dust'/ How the "Tirana Garden Building" tower was built: The "Koçeku" clan invested, Ilir Shtufi did the work!
2026-06-13 15:21:43 / AKTUALITET
Ilir Shtufi , the businessman who was arrested a day ago in Thessaloniki, Greece, after a security measure of arrest in prison was issued against him, turns out to be one of the people who laundered drug money in the construction field.
SPAK says that Ilir Shtuf is considered involved in illegal money laundering activities by acting on behalf of Luçiano Koçek, through involvement in a series of actions such as: sales, fictitious transfers, for the purpose of integrating the proceeds of Koçek's criminal activity into the companies " Nova Construction " and " LTD ".
'The red palace from the white dust'
The Garden Building on Kavaja Street in Tirana was built, attracting attention with its unusual architectural forms, highly visible outcroppings without support on the ground, and its rusty iron imitation color. Over the past few years, it has been recognized as one of the most expensive buildings in the country, although from the outside, it is not very densely populated.
With an area of 62 thousand square meters, such a building could require a minimum of 30 million euros to build with a minimum cost of 500 euros per square meter, while its value on the open market, with current prices of 2 thousand or 3 thousand euros per square meter, could reach 100 or 200 million euros.
In the request for the seizure of the suspected properties, SPAK notes that, according to the testimony of the repentant Erjon Alibej, "half of the value of the palace was invested in cash by citizen Artur Koçeku." (Artur is another name for Luçiano Koçeku).
Alibej, a former drug trafficker from Elbasan, became a collaborator of justice several years ago, after a bloody war with the Çopja brothers' gang that began with the murder of his brother and continued with a dozen people killed and wounded in assassination attempts by both sides, including innocent people.
Speaking to prosecutors for this investigation, Alibej described how drug money appeared in the construction market in Tirana starting in 2020, to materialize in iconic buildings, with architects promoted by Prime Minister Edi Rama himself. Behind the facade lies a business world of unpaid invoices, fraud and criminal extortion that seems to have not been reported to the justice system.
Ilir Shtufi was facing debts and legal problems due to accusations of selling an apartment several times during the construction process. Getting closer to Koçeku helped Shtufi pay off his debts, solve his legal problems, and, in the words of Alibej, "Artur's name drove away the tax collectors."
Prosecutors believe that Luciano Koceku began his career as a trafficker around 2008-2009, mainly in England, while after 2015 he is believed to have entered the international drug trade, trafficking from Latin America to Europe.
He seems to have achieved financial success in 2017 or 2018, when he felt the need to invest somewhere.
The Koçek group and the money laundering infrastructure in the form of investments in Shtuf's palaces constitute another case of a criminal group whose activity was discovered thanks to the interception of Sky ECC communications by French authorities. According to one of Koçek's communications from 2020, he expresses confidence that his money is laundered successfully and safely.
"I have some left, I have arranged the letters of credit well with things for the companies I have," the communication is quoted as saying.
While in reality, according to the testimony of the repentant Erjon Alibej, Koçek acted as the owner of the buildings being built by Ilir Shtufi and that Shtufi's company became the instrument and destination of the money of many other traffickers interested in transforming the proceeds from drug trafficking into apartments and shops.
The prosecution has also identified many other properties belonging to Koçek and Shtuf . The Mine Peza building, with almost 34 thousand square meters of construction, in which preventive seizure was ordered for 38% of the building and a number of apartments, a building on Stavri Themeli Street, in which 37 apartments were blocked for the investigation, as well as the Colonade building on Dritan Hoxha Street, with an area of 31 thousand square meters, where 29 apartments were seized.
The construction boom included Tirana, the southern coast and, to a more limited extent, the Golem area on the Kavaja coast starting in 2018 onwards.
Nova Construction itself became a symbol company after the construction of many towers. Its website features such symbol towers as the Mountain of Tirana or the Vertical Clock or the Bond Tower, which represent futuristic architecture and are currently still in the initial phase of construction. The court decision has imposed a seizure on only three of this company's towers, while many others have not been affected.
Suspicions and accusations have been numerous about the use of the construction sector for money laundering, with several cases documented by the prosecution, while the government of Prime Minister Edi Rama has insisted that such allegations are slander and mud.
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