Jailed drug kingpin is first prisoner to be transferred back to Albania as part of £4m prison swap agreement with UK
AN Albanian drug kingpin has become the first con sent back home as part of a £4million jail swap deal.
Klodjan Copja, 36, will serve the rest of his 17-year term in an Albanian jail, saving UK taxpayers tens of thousands.
He was jailed in 2017 after police smashed a £150million network that flooded London and the South East with cocaine.
Copja spent four years on the run before he was caught on the Greece–Albania border with a false passport and extradited to Britain to stand trial.
Albanian Prison Directorate sources confirmed his transfer took place a few weeks ago.
Britain is paying Albania to repatriate dangerous lags.
Twelve murderers, eight rapists and more than 100 guilty of drugs or firearm offences are expected to be sent back to serve the rest of their sentences.
The deal saves around two-thirds of the £109 daily cost of keeping them locked up here.
It costs £32 a day in Albania.
Announcing the agreement last year, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk said: “The public expects that foreign criminals should serve their sentences overseas — not in our prisons at the expense of the taxpayer.
“This deal will speed up the removal of these offenders and give victims confidence that serious criminals will continue to face justice and spend the remainder of their sentence behind bars.”
A Government spokesperson said: “We are working hard to remove foreign offenders from the UK and over 16,000 have been deported in the past five years.”