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Europol, an international organisation coordinating the fight against crime on the continent, has confirmed that it has offered help to countries investigating ties between the ethnic Albanian terrorist organisation calling itself Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the Albanian Mob operating a wide network of smugglers and financing ethnic Albanian terrorist activity in Kosovo and Metohija aimed at securing independence for Serbia's southern province.
Mark Geleotti, a British criminologist and former intelligence officer, confirmed in a report distributed through the Internet that there was evidence that the KLA enjoyed financial support by Albanian heroin dealers.
The KLA receives funds in two ways - by collecting 'customs duties' on narcotics illegally transported via parts of Kosovo and Metohija it controls and from Albanians backing ethnic Albanian separatists and making big profits through illegal drug trafficking.
Criminologists know for certain that ethnic Albanian terrorists receive assistance from Albanian drug dealers but disagree over the issue of whether the KLA is directly involved in these dirty dealings.
Many of them believe that the KLA has been formed from those who smuggled narcotics from the East, via Turkey and Kosovo and Metohija, to western Europe. Following the end of NATO's bombing of the province, the KLA had to distance itself slightly from the Mob although it still receives funds from it.
Police reports show that 85 percent of heroin distributed in Greece and 70 percent of that distributed in Germany and Switzerland is smuggled via Albania or through legal channels controlled by ethnic Albanian criminals.