In 2014, a major problem in Albania was the high number of non-preforming loans. After a major reform to write off a large portion of the loans and restructure some corporate loans, the preparation of legislation for licensed businesses to collect debts began.

Micro Credit Albania (MCA) was founded in May 2014 by Elda Ibro, and was subsequently licensed by the Bank of Albania to carry out debt collection activities. Over the years, citizens' complaints about abuses by this company increased, especially after MCA gained a licence to grant loans as a financial institution. The scheme implemented by MCA in cooperation with some private bailiffs was to increase the value of the debt that citizens had in banks by adding fees and interest and starting to collect them by force. The company blocked any income the families had, obliging them to sign new loan contracts with high interest, plunging them into a spiral of debt.

After numerous complaints from citizens, the supervision department at the Bank of Albania launched a thematic examination of MCA in July 2020, where four assessment elements came showed the highest risk level.

According to the supervision department’s report, MCA operated in cooperation with another licensed company named Final, the legal office ADCA and the bailiffs services ZIG, Flash and Star.

The group of inspectors also found that in five years of operation, MCA had never filed audited financial statements, and two international audit firms had refused to give an opinion. By July 2020, MCA had bought €85 million of non-preforming loans from ten different banks and financial institutions. According to the report, MCA had paid about €5.2 million for the loan portfolio of €85 million and had recovered about €10.7 million from borrowers.

The inspection found that MCA followed a strategy to collect the full amount of debts, without offering discounts, while imposing very high penalty rates on bad loan restructuring packages of 2% per day or 730% per annum. After the findings of the supervision department in 2020, the Bank of Albania changed the regulation on consumer and mortgage credit, determining that the amount of penalties should not exceed 30% of the contractual obligation; but even after this decision the violations continued.

The investigations carried out by the prosecutor's office of Tirana and an administrative investigation by the Ministry of Justice showed that, after buying bad loans for up to 10% of their value, MCA demanded 100% repayment, imposing penalties, interest and enforcement fees. Creditors whose income was blocked were forced to sign loan contracts with interest rates of up to 25%.

In December 2022, after continuing complaints, the governor of the Bank of Albania decided to suspend MCA's lending licence, but allowed it to continue debt collection for the purchased loan portfolios. After this decision, the company implemented a scheme where thousands of apartments, houses and properties were auctioned without informing the owners and sold at low prices where the buyer was in some cases MCA itself or a circle of people and companies connected with it.

The prosecutor's office of Tirana estimates that the bank governor's decision was not only delayed but was also inappropriate in relation to the violations found. The investigation raises suspicions that the licence suspension was preceded by a correspondence between the owner of MCA and the Bank of Albania governor, where MCA’s partner asked him to consider alternative measures and not to revoke the licence. In March 2016, the Bank of Albania approved a regulation that enabled the sale of bad bank loans, but according to the investigation, MCA is suspected of previously performing this activity and in May 2016 was provided with a licence, which, according to the prosecutor's office, raises doubts that the legal infrastructure was adapted ‘in function of the activity of this company’.

The prosecutor's office of Tirana sent the file for further investigation to the special prosecutor's office as an authority with the responsibility to investigate high-level officials, including the governor of Bank of Albania. In a parallel investigation, led by a group of prosecutors, the Tirana prosecutor's office sent the investigation of the administrator of the company, Elda Ibro, Arben Meskuti and a dozen of private bailiffs who were part of the blackmail scheme that affected thousands of citizens to the special prosecutor's office too.

It is suspected that this group has embezzled €36.8 million by charging abusive fees and following illegal practices for approximately 30,000 citizens. The report was first filed in the general prosecutor's office in 2020 by the minister of justice, after the investigation, the prosecutor's office of Tirana sent it for jurisdiction in 2021 to the special prosecutor's office, which returned it to the prosecutor's office of Tirana. In November 2024, the prosecutor's office of Tirana sent the file again to the special prosecutor's office to investigate the suspects of the scheme with the charge of a structured criminal group, a criminal offence under the jurisdiction of special prosecution. Currently, the special prosecution is independently investigating the case of the Tirana prosecutor's office has against the governor of the Bank of Albania, Gent Sejko, and the file on the suspected criminal group for the fraud scheme. This all reached the public's attention in the summer of 2024 when one of the victims of the fraud scheme killed himself in front of the special prosecution to protest the delayed investigation.