An investigation has found that some of the luxury hotels and resorts in Albania popular with British tourists have been financed with proceeds from drug trafficking into the UK, highlighting how criminal profits earned in Britain are being laundered through the Balkan country's booming construction and tourism industries. This matters because more than a million UK tourists are expected to visit Albania this year, many unaware that their holiday spending may be flowing into properties built with dirty money, while Albanian authorities are accused of tolerating the practice because of the investment it brings.

Among the properties named is the five-star Ajman Park resort near Tirana, which prosecutors say was partly funded by an Albanian cocaine network operating in Britain; its owner, Julian Balla, is now a fugitive wanted over alleged links to trafficking and money laundering. More than 450 Albanian-run cannabis factories have been uncovered in the UK over the past four years, part of a trade estimated at £2.6billion annually, and one economist estimates up to £1.3billion of criminal cash flows into Albania's economy each year, largely through construction. Officials say they have seized 2,500 properties linked to suspected criminals, including several resorts, as part of a probe into a smuggling operation allegedly run by brothers Franc and Hajdar Copja from a house in Tottenham, north London.