Press Release

The Prosecutor's Office at the Court of First Instance of Tirana requested the imposition of the security measure "Arrest in prison" for two Albanian citizens K.K. and K.K. as well as two Italian citizens P.C. and N.T. accused of the criminal offences of "Concealment of income" provided for by Article 180 of the Criminal Code and "Laundering the proceeds of a criminal offense or criminal activity" provided for by Article 287/2 of the Criminal Code.

The Tirana Prosecutor's Office has registered criminal proceedings no. 840, of 2020, in relation to the Subject TIRANA-BULLION Sh.p.k whose administrator is the citizen K.K.

During the investigations, the Prosecutor's Office was able to identify a genuine scheme of transferring monetary amounts of suspected criminal origin through the banking system from Italy to Albania.

Through the fictitious company TIRANA-BULLION Sh.p.k with the purpose of trading and exporting gold, fictitious purchases of gold were made and subsequently fictitious sales with tax invoices were performed where the sole purpose was to justify the transfers of high monetary values of a suspected criminal origin through these invoices amounting to millions of euros from Italian banks to Albanian ones.
These transfers, apparently justified by means of a regular invoicing, i.e. presenting them as payments for purchases of used gold, managed to escape the control of the supervisory agencies in the field of money laundering, and as soon as these amounts arrived in Albania, they were withdrawn in cash and they disappeared. 

For the above, from the entirety of the investigative actions, considering the value of the avoided tax liability, the continuation of the illegal activity, the founded conviction that the above persons have consumed the elements of the criminal offences of "Concealment of income" and "Laundering the proceeds of a criminal offense or criminal activity" provided for by Articles 180/3 and 287/2 of the Criminal Code is established.

For these reasons, based on Articles 287/1 and 315 of the Code of Criminal Procedure as well as on Law no. 9754 dated 14.06.2007 "On the criminal responsibility of legal persons" it was requested that a security measure of "Arrest in prison" be imposed on them according to Article 238 of the Criminal Code, a request which was approved by the Court of First Instance.