“The Albanian mafia calls me and says: we want 500 kilograms of drugs. If you don’t accept, you’re dead.”
These are the words of a member of the Latin Kings gang, with which the BBC opens an article on drug trafficking and the reportedly increasing role of Albanian clans in Ecuador.
The interviewee, presented under the name Cesar, says he was recruited by a corrupt police squad to work for the Albanian mafia, whose influence, according to the British news network, is growing.
“The Albanian mafia has extended its presence in Ecuador in recent years, attracted by the trafficking routes the country offers, and now controls most of the cocaine flow from South America to Europe,” writes the BBC in its online edition.
Even though Ecuador doesn’t produce drugs, 70 percent of the world’s cocaine flows through its ports, President Daniel Noboa has stated.
The narcotics enter the country from Colombia and Peru, two neighboring countries and among the world’s largest cocaine producers.
According to local police, the record drug seizures last year indicate that narcotics exports are on the rise.
“The Albanians needed someone to solve problems. I knew the port guards, the truck drivers, and the camera supervisors, and I helped them through bribes,” says Cesar, 36 years old, and a gang member since he was 14.
Once the cocaine arrives in Ecuador from Colombia and Peru, the BBC continues, it is stored until the Albanian bosses learn that a container ship will depart from the country’s ports heading to Europe.
The gangs use three main methods for trafficking: hiding the drugs in shipments before they reach the port, opening containers inside the port, or attaching the drugs to ships at sea.
“If you don’t do the job the way the Albanians want, they’ll kill you,” Cesar adds.
Criminal groups, including those from other ethnicities, are drawn to Ecuador for its location and legal exports, which serve as a good cover for hiding illegal cargo.
Banana exports make up to 66 percent of the containers leaving Ecuador, about 30 percent of which reach the European Union, where cocaine consumption is on the rise.
Citing as an example the Albanian boss Dritan Gjika, considered among the most powerful of the Albanian mafia in Ecuador, local authorities say he held shares in fruit companies in Ecuador and import companies in Europe, which he used for drug trafficking.
Lawyer Monica Luzarraga, who defended one of Gjika’s partners, has stated that in recent years, banana exports to Albania have peaked.
Around 300 tons of drugs were seized last year in Ecuador—a quantity that, according to the Ministry of Interior, marked another annual record.
