Rama left it to God, but Trump took it over

Alfred Lela

What Edi Rama ‘left to God,’ it seems the Trump administration took over. Luftar Hysa and his brothers have been declared “persona non grata” by the U.S. Treasury Department, identifying them as money launderers for the Sinaloa cartel.

This is precisely the trail raised by Sali Berisha and the Albanian opposition three years ago, after several reports appeared in Mexican and Canadian media where Hysa was active — and after he was photographed leaving Prime Minister Rama’s office, accompanied by a German MP and Dorian Ducka.

At first, Rama denied the meeting and lashed out at the media — as he often does — chastising journalists for “ruining the lives of innocent people and families.” But in a later television appearance on Opinion, Luftar Hysa himself confirmed the meeting, claiming he had gone to see Rama as an intermediary for “a Scottish friend who wanted to write a book about Albania.”

Some time later, pressed by an Italian journalist from RAI 3, the Prime Minister changed his version, admitting he had indeed met Hysa, contradicting his earlier statement. Rama then claimed Hysa had come to request a license for a casino in Vlora on behalf of “a friend who owned a hotel there.”

The matter was forgotten — until yesterday, when, out of the blue, an announcement from the U.S. administration stated that Luftar Hysa and several family members had been placed on the terrorism blacklist, under the same executive order where President Trump classified the Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations.

It was the same claim first made by Mexican and Canadian journalists — and by the Albanian opposition — but dismissed with contempt by Rama not long ago.

The Prime Minister’s shifting narratives and his instinct to duck responsibility by changing versions are well-known — from Elvis Roshi and Agim Kajmaku to Erion Veliaj and Charles McGonigal.
What changes this time is that the Democratic Party’s thesis has now been validated by the Trump administration.

The issue is no longer whether Rama met Hysa “innocently,” for “a Scottish book” or “a German friend,” but the suggestion that the Albanian government — its offices, policies, and licensing structures — have functioned as facilitators of individuals, groups, and an entire philosophy tied to the criminal underworld.

In other words, the Rama government has granted access and space to international networks linked to Albanian criminal figures, both in the country’s economy and, consequently, through their financial power, in its politics as well.

The claims reported in Canadian media align precisely with the U.S. Treasury designation: Hysa and his associates allegedly used casinos on Indigenous lands in Quebec to launder Sinaloa cartel funds.

For reasons that remain unclear — perhaps under pressure from RAI journalist Giorgio Mottola, or perhaps out of the arrogance of someone who feels untouchable — Rama ended up more naive than Hysa himself in that interview. By admitting that Hysa had come to him about a casino in Vlora, Rama effectively connected the dots that had previously been only alleged: that the same laundering scheme Hysa operated in Canada extended to Albania, under the cover of tourism and gaming licenses.

Of course, this alone is not enough to prove the opposition’s claim that Albania is a narco-state — by that logic, one would have to classify Canada the same way, since Hysa operated there too.

Yet there is a fundamental difference between Canada and Albania.
In Canada, Hysa acted against the law, pursued by institutions and investigated by the press.
In Albania, and this is the essential distinction, he gained direct access to the highest office in the land — the Prime Minister’s.

That is what, tragically, makes Albania a narco-state: not because drugs are trafficked here (that happens everywhere except perhaps North Korea), but because licenses, permits, and access itself flow through a political chain that ends at the Prime Minister’s desk.