I think the difference in these countries can be attributed to Orthodox Christianity and the rather strong extended-family bonds.

For example, post-communist Bulgaria still has a corruption problem to this day, but its nature is rather different. The former communist state security had a monopoly on all illegal activities during the 1990s. Street gangs of “mutras” were allowed to roam the streets, steal cars, racketeer small family businesses for “insurance services”, but were never allowed to touch anyone’s child, to force someone into human trafficking or to engage in their own illegal foreign schemes without the full knowledge of the state. State security had all the information about former smuggling routes and the gangs were used solely for “doing a job” with a higher risk-rate.

The real answer to this question will result in an account ban

An existing clan structure and the collapse of the Albanian state in the 90s.

Also, a lot of ethnic Albanians in the diaspora are from Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia, and Bosnia so they are survivors or the children of survivors from the Yugoslav Civil War.

You see similar issues and dynamics among Sri Lankan Tamils in Toronto and Australia, Vietnamese gangs in the Bay Area in the 90s and 2000s, Punjabi Gangs in BC in the 90s and 2000s, and Central American gangs like MS-13 across California - all are the children of survivors or survivors from very brutal civil wars dropped into impoverished neighborhoods with locals who were antagonistic to these refugees.

Add to that a lot of the players in the conflicts in the old country ended up converting their militias or organizations into quasi-gangs as well to continue funding the "good fight" in the old country.

Thank you for such a thoughtful, insightful post. Made me think about things in a different way, most appreciated.

Here in Germany, as you say, both Serbian and Albanian gangs are highly successful. To add to your points, both communities are very tightly knit, and it is not uncommon for an Albanian to have family all around the country. This created a kind of a "virtuous" circle where gangs had connections all around the country, and criminal enterprise was by far the most lucrative choice of career.

You've mentioned many examples already, but another on would be Lebanese people who fled the civil war to Europe, and went on to create some of the most powerful criminal organizations in Germany and neighboring countries.

Yep! Pretty much this! Even I've leveraged old world clan networks professionally (helps to get introduced to VCs, Execs, and Politicians in US, Canada, Australia, and the UK). For some reason, Western Europeans, Canadians, and Americans don't have these kinds of tightly knit networks anymore, but hey, us immigrants and children of immigrants need some kind of upper hand when trying to eck out a new life.

A similar story is happening in Netherlands+Belgium with the Mocro Maffia - a big reason they were able to be successful in the XTC game was because Moroccan Jews are a big player in XTC manufacturing in Israel and there was a diaspora of both Muslim and Jewish Moroccans in Belgium, Netherlands, and France that organized crime groups were able to leverage.

And like you said about the Lebanese, same story with a subset of the Shia Lebanese diaspora in South America (Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Colombia) helping enable Hezbollah.

Interesting. Suggests that we should not admit refugees from brutal civil wars?

In the 90s, Bulgaria was just like Albania but things got dramatically better once Bulgaria got on the NATO and EU path. That said, Bulgaria is still not on par with the the west and a lot of criminal activity is still going on(not that the west doesn't have criminals but in general Eastern Europe is much worse).