Albania’s ‘most wanted pimp’ is still freely walking the streets in Britain four years after losing his extradition battle, the Daily Mail can reveal.
Gezim Troka, 50, was sentenced to six years in prison in 2008 after an Albanian court found him guilty in absentia of forcing his partner into prostitution.
Despite being the subject of an international arrest warrant, he snuck into the UK on a fake passport and only came to the attention of the authorities when he was convicted of common assault ten years later.
When he was in an immigration detention pending deportation, British officials realised he was a wanted fugitive and granted Albania’s extradition request.
Despite Troka’s first appeal against his extradition being rejected, he was still able to take his case to the High Court, which finally threw it out in December 2021.
Sources have now confirmed to the Daily Mail that Troka still remains in the UK – nearly four years on.
And with nearly two decades having passed since his 2008 conviction for pimping, Albanian officials are now considering whether to withdraw their extradition request – raising the possibility he will remain in the UK permanently.
Robert Bates, Research Director at the Centre for Migration Control, said: ‘This case shows how soft Britain’s borders have become. This man is clearly not conducive to the public good, and his continued presence in our country is an insult.’
The Home Office has refused to say whether he will still be extradited.
Troka last appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on August 2, 2024, where a judge granted his solicitor’s request for unconditional bail – meaning he is free to do as he pleases without any restrictions.
He spent more than three years in custody between his initial detention on August 2, 2018 and the 2021 High Court judgment before being released on bail soon after.
According to court documents seen by the Daily Mail, Troka entered into a relationship with a woman in 1994 while he was living in the Albanian city of Fier.
They travelled illegally to Athens, where Troka used ‘physical and psychological violence’ to force her to work in a brothel before stealing her income.
The pair later moved to Rome, and then Padua, where Troka kept exploiting her.
He was finally arrested in Italy in May 27, 1995, and was sentenced to a year and four months in prison for ‘exploitation and favouring prostitution’.
But he only served a partial sentence, and continued exploiting his partner in 2000.
By 2007, he was being hunted by the authorities in Albania, with an international arrest warrant issued in 2008 prior to his conviction in absentia.
That same year, he was caught attempting to enter the UK using a fake Bulgarian passport, Essex News and Investigations reported at the time.
An Albanian organised crime expert said it was not unusual for criminals from the country to become involved in prostitution.
The expert, who asked not to be named, told the Daily Mail: ‘In the late 1990s, Albanians in Italy learned how street prostitution was controlled by the Italian mafia, so they began smuggling Albanian girls to Italy and Greece under false pretenses and forcing them into sex work – as in Troka’s case.
‘By the 2000s, they expanded to the UK, dominating Soho’s red-light district and opening their own brothels, often using Albanian and Eastern European victims.’
In 2008, Albanian pimps were photographed selling a woman outside Selfridges for £3,000.
Police surveillance footage shows a man handing over the cash to two of his countrymen outside the department store as shoppers passed by, unaware of what was happening.
The helpless woman – guarded by a thug – was forced to watch as the men discussed the deal.
She would have been expected to earn her new ‘owner’ £100,000 a year by having sex up to 25 times a day in a brothel.
On this occasion, the woman was lucky. Police swooped to free her and her traffickers – Agran Demarku, his brother Flamur, and a third man, Izzet Fejzullahu – were jailed for a total of 63 years.
In another rare prosecution this year, Albanian crime boss Roland Cankaj was found guilty of running a London brothel staffed by trafficked Brazilian women.
The 43-year-old, who forced women to have sex with up to 15 men a day, was convicted following a six-day trial at Croydon Crown Court.
The Met began investigating an organised crime group called the ‘Cankaj Brotherhood’ in 2022 and found it had been trafficking women into the UK to work in the sex trade.
While under police surveillance, Cankaj was seen moving the women between different addresses and taking provocative pictures of them outside London landmarks to use in adverts.
Police later raided the brothel he ran in Tower Hamlets and found a number of items associated with sex work.
Six victims were identified in total, including a Brazilian beautician who was lured to the UK by the offer of women before being made to have sex with between 10 and 15 men a day, with Cankaj taking half the money.
Troka’s solicitors have been contacted for comment.