Round midnight on February 6, 2024, Ecuador’s Nationwide Police stormed a beige, two-story villa in an expensive gated neighborhood on the outskirts of Guayaquil, the nation’s largest port metropolis.
Inside, they discovered a mom together with her younger daughter, together with a number of firearms and ammunition. The husband, Albanian businessman Dritan Gjika, was nowhere to be discovered.
The raid was a part of a a lot larger regulation enforcement sweep. That evening, police in Spain and Ecuador arrested 31 alleged members of an intercontinental cocaine trafficking syndicate.
Authorities accused the group of smuggling tons of cocaine from Colombia by Ecuador to Europe, and linked the community’s members to seizures totaling over 9.5 tons of cocaine. Following the operation, authorities froze property value over $51 million.
Gjika, the group’s alleged chief, is accused of constructing a complicated trafficking operation with the assistance of influential businessmen related to the very best ranges of presidency and guarded by Ecuador’s chief of police.
The operation revealed how Gjika allegedly grew to become one of the crucial outstanding Albanian traffickers in Ecuador’s drug commerce lately. And whereas a lot of his community appears to have been swept up within the bust, Gjika himself stays on the lam.
The Transfer to Ecuador
Past the truth that Gjika was born on December 28, 1976, in a city referred to as Shkodër in northern Albania, there are few traces of his formative years. Actually, there are few traces of him in Albania in any respect.
“In Albania, there is no such thing as a proof indicating his involvement in any criminality. No legal investigation or courtroom case has been registered in opposition to him, and he has no property or enterprise registered beneath his title,” Dorjana Bezat, an Albanian journalist who has investigated Gjika, advised InSight Crime.
Gjika first went to Ecuador in November 2009, when he was 33 years outdated. In 2013, he was granted citizenship and based mostly himself in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s beating financial coronary heart. It was there that he began to construct his drug trafficking empire.
He was one of many first Albanian traffickers to arrange store in Ecuador, posing as a businessman.
“Gjika is a pioneer by way of going upstream and positioning himself as a key supplier of cocaine,” Fatjona Mejdini, a researcher for the International Initiative Towards Transnational Organized Crime, advised InSight Crime.
Gjika and one other Albanian purchased an export firm referred to as Cresmark S.A. in 2014, and Gjika set himself up as the overall supervisor. The identical 12 months, he began a development firm with Ecuadorian businessman Rubén Cherres.
Cherres was no stranger to regulation enforcement. In 1999, he had been arrested on drug trafficking expenses after a police raid led to the seizure of 108 packages of cocaine. He was acquitted the following 12 months after a number of influential figures supplied testimonies calling for his launch, together with Danilo Carrera, brother-in-law of the then-future Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso.
Except for his hyperlinks to politics, Cherres was additionally well-connected with Ecuador’s enterprise and political elites, making him a robust ally for Gjika’s allegedly burgeoning drug trafficking scheme.
Although it’s unclear precisely when Gjika allegedly started to visitors cocaine to Europe, it’s clear he was in the appropriate spot when, in neighboring Colombia, the federal government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC) signed a historic peace settlement in 2016. When the FARC demobilized in 2017, dissidents of the FARC’s forty eighth Entrance stored their arms and territories on the Colombia-Ecuador border. Missing contacts with worldwide patrons, they forged an alliance with the Constru, a drug trafficking community that dominated routes into Ecuador’s province of Sucumbíos. The Constru related the FARC remnants to worldwide patrons, many from the Balkans, together with Gjika.
SEE ALSO: Unmasking the Foreign Players on Ecuador’s Criminal Chessboard
In keeping with Ecuadorian and Spanish police, Gjika’s group initially trafficked cocaine in batches of lots of of kilograms in containers belonging to Gjika’s firm or different complicit corporations.
In 2018, Gjika seemingly tried to develop his enterprise. He purchased shares in a second export firm, Agricomtrade, which shipped bananas to completely different European corporations.
Considered one of these – Albanian importer Alba Unique Fruit – has been used to import cocaine in Albania, according to the Albanian public prosecutor. In complete, Agricomtrade despatched greater than 150 shipments to Alba Unique Fruit.
Somewhat than getting his fingers soiled, Gjika allegedly contracted out duties to an unlimited community of operatives, speaking with them primarily by Skype.
“He by no means touched a gram of medication,” an Ecuadorian anti-narcotics police official, who requested to stay nameless as a result of safety considerations, advised InSight Crime. “He was, as they are saying right here in Ecuador, watching the bulls from afar.”
Gjika allegedly labored with a number of coordinators who oversaw establishing corporations and recruiting public officers.
The group sourced cocaine from a provider in Colombia, who delivered 4 tons of the drug every month to stashing facilities in Ecuador, in response to experiences by the Spanish police. Funds for cocaine shipments had been deposited utilizing financial institution accounts belonging to a member of Gjika’s community, in response to Ecuadorian prosecutors. As soon as the cocaine arrived in Ecuador, Ecuadorian subcontractors dealt with storage and transport. Gjika’s group paid these subcontractors in cocaine, in response to the anti-narcotics official.
“They paid them 10 kilos of cocaine and people 10 kilos weren’t exported, however had been redistributed regionally,” he stated.
This manner, Gjika largely averted leaving paper trails which might hyperlink him to any drug trafficking exercise.
Gjika the Invisible
By means of his connections with a few of Ecuador’s high businesspeople and authorities officers, Gjika constructed a community that protected his alleged operations from prosecution.
“He was any person actually calculated and closely invested within the enterprise world,” Mejdini stated.
His most necessary contact, authorities say, was Tannya Varela, who was the pinnacle of Ecuador’s police between March 2021 and January 2022, and is beneath investigation by Ecuador’s prosecutor in relation to Gjika.
Ecuadorian lawmakers alleged that Varela began working with Gjika when she was posted at an airport within the province of Guayas. She supposedly helped Gjika by putting trusted law enforcement officials in key areas to facilitate his drug trafficking operations, they imagine.
To make sure cocaine was acquired in Europe, Gjika labored with Mario Sánchez Rinaldi, an Argentinian-Italian businessman based mostly in Spain’s Costa del Sol. Rinaldi performed a key position in laundering the group’s income, in response to Spanish and Ecuadorian authorities. Collectively, they’d end-to-end management over a cocaine route from Colombia to Europe. InSight Crime contacted Rinaldi’s lawyer however didn’t obtain a response.
The First Cracks
As regulation enforcement stress on his operations grew, Gjika appeared to adapt, altering smuggling strategies when crucial.
In 2020, Dutch police seized a cargo of 1.1 tons of cocaine allegedly belonging to Gjika. In response, Gjika seemingly switched from utilizing his personal corporations to largely utilizing a technique often called rip-on rip-off, by which transport containers of non-complicit third events are opened and medicines added. As soon as the containers arrive on the vacation spot port, the medicine are eliminated by gang members, usually aided by corrupt port employees.
Gjika’s data and contacts within the export sector had been allegedly key on this transition. His group had entry to port infrastructure in Ecuador and privileged transport knowledge, in response to Ecuadorian and Spanish police.
SEE ALSO: Albania’s Largest Cocaine Seizure Points to New European Routes
On a single day in June 2021, Gjika and Cherres based eight corporations, most within the development sector. Six have since come beneath investigation for cash laundering. Between 2015 and 2024, the group laundered no less than $31 million by these and different corporations, in response to Ecuador’s public prosecutor.
Nevertheless, in mid-2021, Ecuador’s anti-narcotics police launched an investigation that recognized Gjika as the pinnacle of a cocaine trafficking scheme that concerned Cherres and different Ecuadorian businessmen.
Varela, then the chief of police, seems to have saved them from prosecution. She took the investigators off the case in September 2021, and reassigned them to zones throughout Ecuador. The case was closed months later in January 2022, simply after Varela was removed from workplace by then-President Lasso.
In Might 2024, public prosecutor Diana Salazar revealed the existence of an investigation into Varela and two different police generals for assigning personnel and leaving legal acts unpunished.
Varela denied allegations connecting her to the legal construction in February. InSight Crime was unable to contact her.
The Empire Crumbles
Gjika got here beneath growing scrutiny in early 2023 when a flurry of media experiences talked about his title in relation to a high-level corruption scheme.
On January 9, 2023, the Ecuadorian newspaper La Posta released particulars surrounding a graft scheme headed by Carrera and Cherres. Lasso, in the meantime, affirmed his support for Carrera.
Then, on February 13, 2023, La Posta revealed the leaked 2021 police investigation that linked Cherres, and by extension, Carrera, to Gjika and his drug trafficking community. This revealed Gjika’s operations to the general public, and led to the reopening of the police investigation closed in January 2022.
SEE ALSO: ‘Clan Farruku’ Arrests Highlight Albanians’ Latin America Cocaine Connections
And, lastly, on February 23, 2023, a bunch of lawmakers led by journalist and then-congress member Fernando Villavicencio revealed a report with extra particulars on Gjika’s connections to drug trafficking. The report additionally supplied particulars on the alleged relationship between Varela and Gjika and claimed that Lasso had recognized in regards to the ties between Carrera, Cherres, and the Albanian drug trafficker since July 2021.
The following nationwide uproar positioned Lasso beneath intense scrutiny over the alleged actions of his brother-in-law and his authorities’s efforts to cowl them up. The investigation into Carrera was reopened, and the doable hyperlinks with Albanian drug traffickers contributed to a political scandal that culminated in an impeachment proceeding in opposition to Lasso. Villavicencio was murdered months later throughout his political marketing campaign for the presidency.
Escaping the Warmth
Gjika reportedly left Ecuador on January 9, 2023, the identical day as the primary launch of knowledge by La Posta.
Since then, it’s unclear whether or not he has continued his drug trafficking operations. In March 2023, his long-term enterprise accomplice Cherres was killed. Cherres had been a key witness within the judicial process in opposition to Gjika’s drug trafficking community. Carrera is beneath investigation by Ecuador’s Lawyer Basic for working a corruption community along with Cherres. He didn’t reply to InSight Crime’s request for remark.
Wiretaps launched in March 2024 suggest Gjika could have wished Cherres useless over an unpaid debt.
It additionally seems Gjika has dumped shares in a number of of his different corporations, together with Agricomtrade, onto members of his legal group. These members have since been charged with cash laundering for Gjika’s group by illicit transactions utilizing these corporations.
The joint operation in February 2024 dismantled a lot of Gjika’s alleged trafficking infrastructure, as many high-ranking members of his group had been arrested. They’re at present going through trial over drug trafficking and cash laundering expenses in Ecuador.
Nonetheless, Gjika’s financial exercise in Ecuador has continued regardless of his absence. In October 2023, he based the corporate Riomel Gold Company, devoted to buying and selling in treasured metals. Riomel Gold remains to be lively as of at the moment, in response to Ecuador’s enterprise registry. InSight Crime may attain neither Gjika nor Riomel Gold for remark.
Because the takedown of Gjika’s alleged allies, authorities in Ecuador haven’t arrested some other main Albanian drug traffickers. However demand for cocaine in Europe remains high, and different transatlantic networks are filling the hole in demand.
