Sokol Bibaj Arrested With 8 Tonnes of Cocaine: the Man With a Stolen Macedonian Passport

In a major operation by Albania's organised-crime prosecution, an international network for smuggling cocaine from Latin America into Europe has been broken up - and among those arrested is a name not unfamiliar to Macedonia: Sokol Bibaj.

Bibaj, 43, is named as one of the key members of the criminal structure from which around eight tonnes of cocaine were seized. The investigation showed the organisation didn't deal only in drugs, but also in money laundering through legal investments - authorities froze and seized 491 properties and financial assets worth around 150 million euros.

Here the story becomes ours. Bibaj is mentioned in the „Doppelgänger" affair, when Macedonian authorities issued Macedonian passports to well-known regional criminals. He was also wanted in Macedonia over a fake Macedonian passport issued under the name „Andon Papi" - using the stolen identity of a real Macedonian citizen. He travelled often between Albania and Macedonia, and worked with a Skopje individual nicknamed „Ševal".

And here is the question every citizen has the right to ask: how does an international cocaine smuggler get a Macedonian document with a stolen identity? Who signed off, who looked the other way, and how many other „Andon Papis" are still walking around with our passports in their pockets? Albania caught its own. The question is whether anyone here will answer for the document at all.