Ethnologie française, XLVII, 2017, 2, p. 321‑330 Pyramid Firms and Value Transformation in Postsocialist Albania Smoki Musaraj Ohio University RÉSUMÉ Firmes pyramidales et transformation de la valeur dans l’Albanie post‑socialiste Avec leur efondrement, les entreprises nommées « irmes pyramidales » (irma piramidale) en Albanie ont englouti les économies de centaines de milliers d’investisseurs et ont mené le pays au bord de la guerre civile. Cet article étudie comment et pourquoi les investisseurs se sont engagés dans ces plans inanciers frauduleux. Plus précisément, il analyse la façon dont ces entreprises ont mobilisé les réseaux de parenté, ainsi que les versements opérés par les migrants, quand du fait des transformations consé‑ cutives à la chute du socialisme au début des années 1990, l’émigration est devenue massive. Alors que la situation économique était instable et l’accès au inancement très limité, ces irmes ofraient un « seuil de conversion de la valeur » : elles mobilisaient diférentes formes de richesse (relations familiales, versements, travail) et permettaient, ou plutôt promettaient la création de nouvelles formes de valeur inancière, sociale et culturelle. Mots-clés : Firmes pyramidales. Valeur. Versements. Post‑socialisme. Albanie. Smoki Musaraj Ohio University Department of Sociology and Anthropology 162 Bentley Annex Athens, OH 45701 USA musaraj@ohio.edu During my research on the infamous pyramid irms (irma piramidale) that were all the rage in early nine‑ ties Albania one question haunted me from the out‑ set: if people had no savings, no private assets, many of them had become unemployed with the collapse of the socialist economy, where, then, did they ind the money to deposit in these irms? In the oicial record and in oral histories, one encounters various allega‑ tions of money laundering and other types of illegal activities, such as illegal traicking (in drugs, humans), trading diesel and weapons to former Yugoslav Repub‑ lics in breach of a UN embargo [see for instance Jarvis, 1999; Bezemer, 2001]. Besides these alleged sources of illicit wealth (which are hard to substantiate through oicial sources), former investors locally known as kreditorë (creditors) frequently discussed two forms of wealth that they used as a source of cash for the irms: migrant remittances and the sale of recently privatized apartments. In this article, I explore how one of these forms of wealth—migrant remittances—circulated in and through these irms. 1 The pyramid irms that emerged in early nineties Albania were entities of ambiguous nature—they were part formal, part informal but all were legally regis‑ tered as either companies (kompani) or foundations/ charities (fondacione). Kompani had some investments in other economic activities and owned some assets while fondacione conducted a more “pure” type of pyramid scheme. The leaders of these irms came from var ious socio‑cultural backgrounds; a majority of them were men who, during the communist regime, had occu‑ pied positions that had aforded them access to the elite oicials, wide social networks, and to economic resources unavailable to most. For instance, the owner of the most trusted of the irms, Vefa, was a warehouse manager before the nineties; the co‑owner of Gjallica was a low‑level army oicial with a wide network of trusted oicers. Many of these, but especially kompani’