Albania has seized an estimated 150 million euros in assets and issued warrants for the arrest of alleged cocaine kingpin Dritan Gjika and nine other Albanian citizens for allegedly trafficking drugs around the globe and laundering criminal proceeds in the country, local authorities said this week.

Albania’s Special Prosecution Office against Corruption and Organized Crime (SPAK) announced the action in a June 16 press release, which identified Gjika with the initials “D. Gj.” An Albanian law enforcement source confirmed to OCCRP partner Shteg that “D. Gj” is Gjika.

SPAK’s press statement alleged Gjika was among 10 Albanian citizens participating in an “international cocaine trafficking and laundering network” that operated in Latin America, Brazil, Belgium and the Netherlands from 2019 to 2021.

Gjika has already been arrested —- in Abu Dhabi in May 2025 — and is awaiting extradition to Ecuador, where the State Attorney General’s Office alleges he was “the leader of Albanian mafia operations.” 

Gijka’s lawyers did not reply to an OCCRP request to comment.

SPAK issued arrest warrants for the 10 Albanians and requested the Special Court of First Instance for Corruption and Organized Crime seize roughly 150 million in assets, including 266 properties, 209 bank accounts, various vehicles and boats, it said.

Gjika and the others allegedly trafficked “dozens of tons” of cocaine from Latin America to European countries and then laundered “a significant portion of the proceeds” in Albania by investing cash in real estate, construction, hospitality, and other areas, SPAK said.

One member of the alleged network had been arrested in Albania and authorities were searching for two other alleged members in the country, SPAK said. SPAK emphasized that it is cooperating with law enforcement agencies in other countries to pursue the other alleged members of the group who are believed to be outside Albania.

“Special thanks to Eurojust, Europol, the judicial authorities of Ecuador, France, Colombia, the Netherlands, the NCA [National Crime Agency] and other law enforcement agencies in Albania, for their intensive cooperation and assistance in the context of the investigations of this criminal proceeding,” the SPAK press release said.

Ecuadorian prosecutors have accused Gjika and collaborators of using several companies to ship drugs from the South American country to Europe hidden in cargoes of bananas. According to Ecuadorian court documents, they allegedly used companies in the United Arab Emirates and Spain to launder their illicit profits.

At least 17 people charged with belonging to or aiding Gjika’s alleged criminal organization have been convicted in Ecuador, 15 of whom are awaiting appeal. Ecuadorian courts have convicted four others for laundering the organization’s allegedly illicit proceeds, making transfers of more than $43 million between 2015 and 2023. 

Last month OCCRP published excerpts from Gjika’s messages to alleged co-conspirators on an encrypted platform, which were filed by Ecuadorian prosecutors as evidence in the criminal case against him and members of his alleged network. 

They depict a drug-smugging organization whose corporate-like structure and infiltration of Ecuador’s police and ports enabled it to shift large volumes of drugs and money across the Atlantic Ocean.

The South American country, where a surge in cocaine trafficking in recent years has resulted in an enormous increase in homicide rates linked to both local and transnational criminal groups, imposed a 60-day state of emergency in ten 10 provinces and three cantons this week.

The June 16 security decree, made by Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, stated it was necessary to address “severe internal unrest,” as 879 homicides had been recorded in the targeted areas between May 1 and June 12.

It is the latest in a series of emergency measures decreed by Noboa, who has pitched himself as an anti-drug crusader since he took office in November 2023, even while one of his family’s companies, Noboa Trading Co., has been caught up in the huge number of drug shipments sent from Ecuador to the Balkans.

With additional reporting by David González.

A U.S. citizen with Russian heritage sanctioned this week for disseminating wartime disinformation and endorsing Russia’s territorial claims over Ukraine has issued a defiant response, vowing on a Russian video platform to continue her “mission” and declaring that the penalties only show she was “on the right path.”

The European Union has sanctioned Alexandra Jost – known online as “Sasha Meets Russia” – accusing her of spreading pro-Kremlin narratives about the war in Ukraine under the guise of lifestyle and cultural content. The designation was part of a broader sanctions package targeting 34 individuals and 47 entities tied to Russia’s energy revenues, military-industrial complex, propaganda networks, and human rights abuses.

Jost has been banned from a number of social media services, including YouTube and Instagram, but has been active on X, where she thanked owner Elon Musk “for this platform” in her pinned post. Her content mixes travel videos from across Russia and posts about traditional holiday celebrations with acerbic barbs against Europeans (“a bunch of gays”) and aggressive rhetoric against Ukraine, which she says will “soon be Russia.”

In its sanctions notice, the EU described Jost as a social media influencer living in Russia who had built “an extensive base of followers under the guise of cultural coverage” while disseminating disinformation and supporting Russia’s territorial claims over Ukraine. The sanctions impose an asset freeze and prohibit EU citizens and companies from making funds or economic resources available to her.

The notice says an independent investigation showed that Jost received funding from RT, Russia’s state media outlet, averaging 170,000 rubles, or about $2,000, per month during the first three quarters of 2024.

That finding matches reporting published in March by OCCRP and iStories, OCCRP’s Russian partner, as part of an investigation into how RT secretly paid or supported foreign-facing video bloggers who promote Kremlin narratives.

The investigation found that RT’s influence efforts continued after the outlet was banned in the EU shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Reporters identified several influencers who presented themselves as independent while publishing material that promoted Russia as a haven for Western conservatives, glorified the war in Ukraine, denied Russian war crimes, or encouraged foreigners to move to Russia for its “traditional values.”

Jost, who publishes content under the names “Sasha Meets Russia” and “Sasha and Russia,” was among the influencers identified in the investigation. Reporters found that she had taken part in organized trips with other pro-Russian bloggers and published positive stories about Russia to large audiences on Instagram and TikTok.

Much of Jost’s content focuses on travel, culture, and everyday life in Russia. But the investigation also found that Kremlin-friendly themes appeared in her posts and interviews, including criticism of the West, praise for Russian “traditional values,” and claims that Russia offered an escape from Western Russophobia. In one interview cited by OCCRP and iStories, Jost said she moved to Russia because it had traditional values and no “gender agenda.”

The EU sanctions notice also says Jost and her husband received grants through the public relations agency Limitless from Russia’s Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives, a Kremlin-created fund that supports cultural projects.

Kazakh and Czech police have dismantled an international channel used to illegally sell the personal data belonging to citizens from Kazakhstan and neighboring former Soviet republics—known as CIS countries, Kazakhstan’s Interior Ministry announced.

The operation, carried out in coordination with Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee, prosecutors, and Czech law enforcement, followed a lengthy investigation. Searches were conducted simultaneously in Ústí nad Labem in the Czech Republic and in the Kazakh cities of Astana, Almaty, and Karaganda, where investigators seized digital devices and cash.

According to authorities, the group ran a closed online platform that sold access to personal data from Kazakhstan and neighboring states through one-time searches and subscription plans. The network included coordinators, operators who processed requests, and drop accounts used to cash out the proceeds. The suspected organizers were detained while the investigation continues.

Shortly before SpaceX’s initial public offering catapulted Elon Musk’s personal wealth over $1 trillion, the company’s founder declared that the goal of his rocket company is to “take the fiction out of science fiction.” Specifically, his central goal since SpaceX’s inception in 2002 has been to establish a colony on Mars.  

This mission — which Musk hopes will make him worth $10 trillion one day — is described in the company’s filing to the Security and Exchange Commission. SpaceX, it declared, will build

the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars. To do this, we have formed the most ambitious, vertically integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth with unmatched capabilities […] to harness the Sun to power a truth-seeking artificial intelligence that advances scientific discovery, and ultimately to build a base on the Moon and cities on other planets. [Emphasis added.]

Leave aside, for the moment, the irony of Musk, one of the great purveyors of misinformation, positioning his company on the side of “truth-seeking.” The central role of artificial intelligence in the context of his Mars plans is underappreciated among his fans and proponents of space colonization generally. The truth is, this future is not meant for our species. There is no scientifically plausible way for biological humans to colonize Mars, much less the galaxy. If colonies someday exist on our planetary neighbor, they’ll be occupied by artificial “posthumans” rather than our species.

To understand exactly why Musk’s vision of the future is not for us, we need to back up and establish a few basics about Mars — facts that Musk surely knows well. For starters, the place is completely inhospitable to flesh-and-blood creatures like us. As the astrophysicist Adam Becker describes the problem, “the radiation levels are too high, the gravity is too low, there’s no air, and the dirt is made of poison.” Specifically, Martian soil and water are contaminated by toxic perchlorates that are deadly to humans. Yet for Martian astronauts, Becker notes, this “would be the least of their concerns” because the air pressure is so low that “direct exposure to Martian air would boil the saliva off an astronaut’s tongue while they asphyxiate.”

The average temperature on Mars is minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit, which is about 50 degrees lower than the average temperature on Mount Everest in January. Because there’s no magnetic sphere and barely any atmosphere, the Martian surface receives “about as much radiation as nearby points in deep space,” Becker says. Indeed, the trip to Mars itself would pose enormous challenges for any biological being, as radiation in space is about 100 times stronger than on Earth. This radiation would damage cells, induce cancer and destroy our brains. The microgravity awaiting astronauts, meanwhile, has been linked to losses in muscle mass and bone mineral density, along with other forms of tissue atrophy.

As Peter Brannen points out, Mars is less habitable right now than Earth was immediately after a massive asteroid struck the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, killing all the non-avian dinosaurs. How do we know? Because mammals survived the ensuing impact winter, which plunged global surface temperatures and blotted out the sun. In contrast, if you were to place a mammal on Mars right now, it would immediately die.

This means that the only way “we” will colonize Mars is by getting rid of our biology and replacing it with computer hardware. How might we do this? There are two options: First, we could build autonomous artificial intelligence systems to take our place. You can think of these as more advanced forms of Musk’s chatbot Grok, a population of which could be shipped to Mars on a rocket. The downside is that it would be them rather than us occupying the Red Planet.

The second option is for humans to merge with AI. This is what Musk’s company Neuralink is trying to do. Brain-machine interfaces, Musk tells us, will confer “cybernetic superpowers” to human-AI hybrids, while enabling us to offload our memories and personalities to the cloud. This ends with fully “uploaded” minds, whereby we swap our squishy brains for silicon hardware. We will become AI, living as disembodied software that interacts with the world through robotic appendages. Rather than traveling to Mars with Hal 9000 onboard, as in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Hal 9000 would be us.

Musk presumably understands this. As Google co-founder Larry Page once told him, “if life is ever going to spread throughout our galaxy and beyond … then it would need to do so in a digital form.” Similarly, Musk’s friend William MacAskill writes that “digital sentience … makes interstellar travel much easier: it is easier to sustain digital than biological beings during very long-distance space travel.”

The problem is that we have absolutely no idea whether digital sentience is even possible. We don’t know if artificial systems can give rise to conscious experiences — that qualitative inner feeling of seeing red or listening to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” Neuroscientists like Anil Seth argue that artificial consciousness isn’t feasible, and that mind-uploading won’t yield sentience. I think he’s correct, because computer hardware probably isn’t the right kind of material to produce inner experiences — just as spaghetti noodles aren’t the right sort of material to build a bridge across a mile-wide river.

That’s a big problem because SpaceX’s entire mission fundamentally depends on the feasibility of artificial consciousness. If artificial systems can’t be conscious, then the company’s central goal of extending “the light of consciousness to the stars” will necessarily fail. Musk has been careful not to highlight this fact in public, as it would spook SpaceX investors. Most investors probably don’t realize that Martian colonies will be occupied by AIs rather than humans, and few have likely thought carefully about the extraordinary challenges of building AIs with conscious experiences in the first place. Taking the fiction out of science fiction will be much harder than Musk lets on. 

But if we’re going to entertain Musk’s provocations on their own terms, let’s imagine a further sci-fi scenario: establishing a Martian colony would almost certainly lead to catastrophic conflicts with Earth. As the political theorist Daniel Deudney points out in his book “Dark Skies,” the political system of the solar system will be anarchic — meaning there will be no central authority, as in the international system of states — and the colonies of digital people will inevitably want their independence. This will foment tension between Mars and Earth, whose terrestrial nations will wish to maintain control over its Martian outposts, just as England did over the 13 U.S. territories in the 18th century.

In this predicament, Earth would be at an enormous space-military disadvantage compared to Mars. We would almost certainly lose any war that breaks out because, not only could we not fight on Mars, but the Red Planet is right next to the asteroid belt. What if hyper-intelligent Martian denizens launch spacecraft that redirect the orbital trajectory of large asteroids toward Earth? Just one of these asteroids could trigger the sort of mass extinction that happened 66 million years ago. Small mammals might survive; humans wouldn’t.

People who hear that Musk will take “us” to space get excited because it sounds cool, but few have seriously reflected on who he means by “us,” or on the messy details of how it could actually happen. “We” won’t be going to Mars, and there is no Planet B for our biological species. The plan to create a “posthuman” population to realize Musk’s goals carries much greater challenges and risks — technical, political and philosophical — than building a giant rocket. So great, in fact, that there is a near-zero chance of them being overcome. In the meantime, trillions of dollars that could have saved starving children and built out a new global energy system will have been wasted.

This is why the IPO of SpaceX is a sad day for humanity. A man who unilaterally terminated the U.S. Agency for International Development, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths (so far), many of them children, now has unfathomable amounts of wealth and power to manipulate our democracy. As my colleague Devin Kellis writes, “the road to Mars is being paved in blood, giving new meaning to the ‘Red Planet.’”

Yet, for reasons that few of us can grasp, gullible investors remain entranced by his messianic aura. In 2016, Musk confidently predicted a self-sufficient Martian colony with 1 million people by 2024. That same year, SpaceX announced that it was “planning to send [the rocket] Dragon to Mars as soon as 2018.” Musk later “said the first unmanned missions could take place in 2022,” and by 2020 he was predicting the first human missions to Mars by 2026. When named the 2021 Person of the Year by Time, he told the magazine that he’d “be surprised if we’re not landing on Mars within five years.” When 2026 arrived, he shifted once again in promising that “an unmanned Starship would soon depart for Mars, paving the way for human-led missions,” and “if those landings go well, then human landings may start as soon as 2029, although 2031 is more likely.”

Early this year, SpaceX abruptly pivoted from colonizing Mars in the near future “to building a self-growing city on the Moon,” which Musk claims his company “can potentially achieve … in less than 10 years.” He now says that “Mars would take 20+ years.”

As the reality of getting “conscious beings” to Mars continues to slap Musk in the face, his forecasts will continue to retreat toward the horizon. My cash is on it never happening. In the meantime, gigantic heaps of money will be wasted and Musk will get even richer, perhaps someday achieving his outrageous goal of $10 trillion in personal wealth. He will continue to fail upward, to the detriment of the rest of the human race. It’s his world now, built on science fictions. We’re just living in it.

The post Humans Will Never Colonize Mars — And Musk Knows It appeared first on Truthdig.

In a major blow to a 13-year U.K. anti-corruption investigation, a London court acquitted on Wednesday former Nigerian Petroleum Resources Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke of all bribery charges.

 Following a five-month trial at Southwark Crown Court, the 65-year-old was found not guilty of five counts of accepting bribes and one count of conspiracy to commit bribery. The verdict concludes a long-running probe by the U.K.’s National Crime Agency (NCA) into one of Africa’s most prominent political figures.

Alison-Madueke, who served as oil minister from 2010 to 2015 and later chaired the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), was accused of trading lucrative contracts for a lavish London lifestyle. British investigators alleged she received at least 100,000 British pounds ($136,525) in cash, alongside private jet flights, luxury goods, and property upkeep from wealthy oil executives.

During the trial, which began in January, she portrayed herself as a strict enforcer of rules who was nicknamed “Madam Due Process.” She told the court she never sought or accepted bribes, maintaining that she advised the businessmen on interior design and that many luxury purchases were not for her.

She also testified that Nigerian ministers were barred from holding foreign bank accounts while serving overseas, prompting her to rely on wealthy associates to cover living expenses, and argued these funds were always reimbursed in Nigeria, but records proving the repayments had been seized from her home in Abuja and were never produced by authorities.

Alison-Madueke’s defense team argued the lengthy delay in bringing the case to court was unjust, asserting that critical documents demonstrating her innocence had gone missing in Nigeria. Former President Goodluck Jonathan provided a statement to the court supporting her case, confirming that third parties frequently paid for transport and accommodation for ministers on official business overseas.

The jury also acquitted Alison-Madueke’s co-defendants. Her 69-year-old brother, Doye Agama, an archbishop at a Pentecostal church in Manchester, was cleared of conspiracy to commit bribery. Oil industry executive Olatimbo Ayinde, 54, was found not guilty of bribery after her defense argued she had been working as an informant for Nigerian authorities to expose corruption, encouraged by security services to “play along.”

The London proceedings unfolded alongside broader, ongoing legal and asset-recovery efforts globally. In 2017, Nigerian prosecutors filed separate money-laundering charges against her, alleging payments to influence election officials ahead of the 2015 vote.

Additionally, the U.S. Justice Department previously recovered more than $53 million in allegedly corruption-linked oil proceeds laundered through the U.S. In 2025, the U.S. and Nigeria announced an agreement to repatriate an additional $52.88 million in forfeited assets linked to an investigation associated with Alison-Madueke and her alleged associates.