European mafias operate from Ecuador, even from prison they coordinate the exit of the drug

Since 2001, Albanians began to arrive in Colombia to traffic the drug produced by some cartels. At that time they were only intermediaries, since that market in Europe was controlled by the Italian mafia.

Over the years, the Balkan mafia gained ground and began to control the entry of narcotics into various ports on the Old Continent. Then, Ecuador became an attractive place due to its poorly controlled borders, its judicial system full of flaws and the dollarized economy that allows, through cash investments, to launder drug money.

In the last fourteen years, the emissaries of these groups have multiplied the agreements for the supply of cocaine between Colombian suppliers and various European mafias.

César Peña, Guayas prosecutor, calculates that in the last seven years he has investigated more than a dozen foreigners including Kosovars, Albanians, Serbs, Macedonians and Montenegrins, mainly for drugs.

For Ecuador, controlling the migratory flow from Eastern Europe is a challenge, which is why the Government seeks alliances with other countries and even with the United Nations.

“We are in the process of joining the ATS Global program, which will allow us to know a risk profile of passengers before they arrive in the country,” General Fausto Olivo, National Undersecretary of Migration, told Ecuavisa.

The reach of these drug trafficking organizations is worldwide. Although they have operations in the Balkan region, they are based in Albania. From there they send delegates to South America to negotiate drug shipments in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. Some foreigners stay in Ecuador as collateral or hostages of individuals who have sent drugs to the destination. Several have been killed in recent years.

“The moment the shipment does not reach its destination, we have a murder,” journalist Klodiana Lala commented on her show on Albanian television. She also maintained that there are about 3,000 Albanians living in Ecuador and many of them would be involved in drug trafficking.

Lala also said that none of those killed turned out to be a group leader. The leaders, indicates the journalist, would be located mostly in Dubai.

Albanians arrested and killed

One of the first Albanians to arrive in the country was Arbër Çekaj, in 2009, who founded a banana export firm in Ecuador that he apparently used to hide narcotics on cargo ships, according to research by Plan V and Bosnia Project for Information on Corruption and Organized Crime (OCCRP).

An investigation was opened against Cekaj ​​in 2015 for drug trafficking in the Miracle Prosecutor’s Office, despite the judicial process he continued to export the product every week until in 2018 he was finally arrested in Germany. It is estimated that between 2015 and 2018 alone, it exported 3,000 tons of bananas. He is still in prison in Germany.

Then, in 2011, Adriatik Tresa arrived in Ecuador, who was gunned down in November 2020 at his home in the Bali urbanization, in La Aurora, when several men armed with rifles faked a police operation.

Upon arriving in Ecuador, Tresa settled down as the owner of a carpentry shop and a pharmacy, according to reports in the Albanian press. He fell on the radar of authorities in Ecuador when he was detained and his name mentioned in connection with the 2013 murder of journalist Fausto Valdiviezo.

He was also prosecuted for money laundering, as he was found along with other foreigners with cash: 39,100 dollars and 72,500 euros. The following year Tresa was declared innocent by an Ecuadorian court.

In May 2017, Ilir Hidri, another Albanian, was gunned down on 36th and Ch, in the Guayaquil suburb, by gunmen on motorcycles. In November of that year, Remzi Azemi – a Kosovar-Albanian national, who turned out to be Hidri’s nephew – was injured when a hitman shot him as he lowered the glass of his armored car to smoke. It happened on May Day and Carchi.

Tresa was arrested as a suspect in the Hidri crime for a weapon found in his house, but the court declared him innocent.

Tresa’s crime is similar to that of Montenegrin Fadil Kacanic and his wife, Ecuadorian Elsa G., who worked at the airport. Fadil and Elsa G. were kidnapped while they were sleeping and murdered in March 2018, in Guayaquil.

Men dressed as policemen also arrived at their home, in a private urbanization in Los Ceibos, who took them away and then the couple appeared on the road to the coast with shots to the head.

Kacanic did not record any economic activity in Ecuador. But he had a process for drug trafficking. In 2010 he was found with 18 kilos of cocaine in his luggage, at the Guayaquil airport. His destination was Amsterdam. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison. In 2018 he was serving a sentence for drug trafficking with a semi-open regime. The Montenegrin was allegedly a relative of the Albanian man shot in the armored car and they shared the vehicle.

Another crime that is still under investigation is that of Sasa Spasic, 56, the Serb who was murdered in July 2020 in a Samborondón shopping center. A hitman shot him when he was having coffee with his family.

The most recent case is that of Dashi Ergys, who was shot on Saturday, January 22, 2022, in a restaurant in the north of Guayaquil. The gunmen fired more than 25 shots at the business that was full of customers.

Dashi, according to European media, was one of the leaders of a gang from Albania and had a record for drug trafficking, sexual exploitation and possession of weapons in Europe. In Ecuador he had no record.

European organized crime groups have made great strides in Ecuador in recent years. This was also evident with the arrest in 2014 of Dritan Rexhep, the Albanian accused of drug trafficking and international fugitive, who was arrested with 278 kilos of cocaine in Ecuadorian territory.

Rexhepi was sentenced to 13 years and is serving them in the Latacunga prison, from where, according to Interpol, the Albanian operated with encrypted communications to coordinate the departure of large drug shipments until his organization in Abania was dismantled in September 2020. More than 100 people were arrested there.

Led by four clans

The Balkan mafia is mainly led by four family groups. The Grupa Amerika, originally from Belgrade, was detected in South America in 2016, when in July Zoran Jakšić, the second in command, was arrested in Peru, who would have organized a structure for the shipment of Peruvian cocaine from Ecuador.

The next clan is the Šarić Group, led by the Serbian Darko Šarić, of whom there are no records of operations in our country, since his group would buy drugs in Colombia to send them across the Atlantic, from Brazil or Uruguay.

The third family group is that of Sreten Joci, who would ship to Europe through the Caribbean. Finally, there is the Berane clan, which would operate from Colombia and Venezuela, according to the report. (I)