Rumour has it that the post of the Chief of Police in the Tirana Airport was "sold" at the beginning of April for an undisclosed amount (presumably 250,000 US dollars).
The reasons: all shippers (including NATO and aid organizations) have to pay enormous kickbacks to airport and customs officials to release their goods.
Most Albanian families charged refugee families an average of 500 DM a month for their accommodation in subhuman conditions. Refugees who could not pay (or who had no relatives in Germany and Switzerland to pay for them) were evicted, often cruelly.
As Serbs were murdering their supposed brothers in Kosovo, Albanian crime gangs laid an oil pipeline (through Lake Shkoder) to Serbia and supplied the Serb army with the oil it was deprived of by NATO.
Welcome to the Balkans.
LI. Milosevic's Treasure Island
Milosevic and his cronies stand accused of plundering Serbia's wealth - both pecuniary and natural. Yet, the media tends to confuse three modes of action with two diametrically opposed goals. There was state sanctioned capital flight. Gold and foreign exchange were smuggled out of Yugoslavia and deposited in other countries. This was meant to provide a cushion against embargo and sanctions imposed on Yugoslavia by the West.
The scale of these operations has been wildly over- estimated at 4 billion US dollars. A figure half as big is more reasonable. Most of the money was used legitimately, to finance the purchase of food, medicines, and energy products. Yugoslavia would have frozen to death had its leaders not have the foresight to act as they did.
This had nothing to do with party officials, cronies, and their family members enriching themselves by "diverting" export proceeds and commodities into private accounts in foreign lands. The culprits often disguised these acts of plunder as sanctions-busting operations. Hence the confusion.