Ecuador declared war on 22 domestic drug trafficking gangs in January, proclaiming them terrorist organizations and arresting over 11,000 suspects.  But some of the most serious blows to date have been against transnational networks. 

In February, a joint Spanish-Ecuadorian operation brought down an Albanian-led drug trafficking network, about two weeks after Ecuadorian police arrested a major Colombian guerrilla leader operating in the province of Imbabura. 

SEE ALSO: GameChangers 2023: Ecuador Loses Its Grip on Crime

Sandwiched between the world’s top cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has become a hub and base for several transnational criminal networks. Its long coastline and large container ports make it a perfect launch pad for drug shipments heading to the United States and Europe. Colombian, Mexican, and Balkan drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) all have an established presence in the country.

These international DTOs send brokers and emissaries to subcontract and coordinate cocaine shipments, but there is little evidence that they directly interfere with Ecuadorian domestic gang dynamics or conflicts.

Their greatest impact is financial. By paying Ecuadorian transport groups, dispatch networks, chain gangs, hitmen, and corrupt officials, foreign groups have spurred the development of sophisticated and powerful homegrown networks in Ecuador and helped weaken institutions.

Below, InSight Crime maps out these networks. 

Colombian Armed Groups

Colombian criminal groups – principally the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC) — established a foothold in Ecuador in the 1990s, building extensive networks to traffic drugs, arms, and supplies in the border regions.

The Ecuadorian provinces of Esmeraldas, Carchi, and Sucumbíos border the Colombian departments of Putumayo and Nariño. Ecuador’s proximity to these vital coca cultivation and cocaine production zones made it an attractive haven for the FARC, who took advantage of the often-porous border to set up base camps and drug trafficking routes on the Ecuadorian side as they sought shelter from Colombian armed forces.

Since the 2016 demobilization of the FARC, Colombian criminal groups’ influence has waned in Ecuador, with no single criminal group regulating the cross-border drug trade. But in both Sucumbíos and Esmeraldas, FARC dissidents and other organized crime syndicates that formerly worked with the guerrillas picked up where the FARC had left off.

Today, at least three Colombian groups operate on both sides of the border: the Border Command (Los Comandos de la Frontera – CDF), Oliver Sinisterra Front (Frente Oliver Sinisterra – FOS), and the Urías Rondón front. These groups, which are among those collectively known as the ex-FARC mafia, control the main crossing points for transporting cocaine into Ecuador. Their presence also extends into the border provinces.

As Colombian groups are the primary cocaine suppliers for transnational buyers, they often have direct relationships with foreign criminal groups. For example, the FOS supplies cocaine to the Sinaloa Cartel (Cartel de Sinaloa), while the Urías Rondón front sends cocaine to the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG), according to a report from the Colombian and Ecuadorian Ombudsman offices. 

Colombian groups subcontract Ecuadorian groups to store, transport, and ship the cocaine to these international partners. Recently, Ecuadorian authorities claimed the FOS works with the Tiguerones, while the Urías Rondón front allies itself with the Choneros, according to an investigation by Colombian newspaper “El Tiempo.” But longstanding partnerships between Colombian and Ecuadorian criminal groups have yet to emerge.

Despite these logistical alliances with Ecuadorian groups, some Colombian groups have expanded their presence deeper into Ecuador, which could suggest a lack of trust in Ecuadorian groups to oversee drug shipments effectively. Ecuadorian authorities allege that they have attacked and intimidated Ecuadorian towns near the border and set up base camps in Ecuadorian territory.

Since August 2023, Ecuadorian authorities have, on at least three separate occasions, captured alleged members of the FOS in Esmeraldas, including the group’s leader Carlos Arturo Landázuri Cortés, alias “El Gringo,” and third-in-command, Janer Cortés Ortiz, alias “Guasón.”

Additionally, Ecuadorian authorities have discovered small-scale coca cultivation and cocaine processing facilities in the border areas of Carchi and Sucumbíos as recently as August 2023. Colombian criminal groups have capitalized on the minimal presence of the state and used these small-scale coca enclaves for laboratories to experiment with crystallization and refining cocaine hydrochloride in Ecuadorian territory, according to a report from the Ecuadorian Organized Crime Observatory (Observatorio Ecuatoriano de Crimen Organizado – OECO). 

The presence of cheap precursor chemicals for cocaine production in provinces like Sucumbíos has also contributed to this dynamic, the OECO report added.

Still, the scale of cultivation and production in Ecuador is nowhere near those of Putumayo and Nariño, two of Colombia’s largest coca production hubs.

Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations

In the past, the Mexicans — who are the main buyers of cocaine trafficked to the United States — set up and maintained a permanent presence in Ecuador, running major operations with substantial commercial and trafficking infrastructure. But today their operations are more agile, relying on the short-term presence of coordinators. 

Ecuadorian authorities were able to detain just such a coordinator working for the Sinaloa Cartel in November 2021. 

At the time of his arrest, Brayan Rodríguez already faced drug trafficking and money laundering charges in the United States. He entered the country to coordinate with in-country groups providing transport, security, and logistics services, and to personally oversee a large shipment of cocaine scheduled for December of that year, police told Ecuadorian news media.  

Today, the Sinaloa Cartel relies on such representatives, sent from Mexico for a short, fixed period, to make deals with Colombian suppliers and Ecuadorian transporters, ensure the deals are kept, and deliver in-cash payments brought in from Mexico. But this was not always the case. 

For years, the Sinaloa Cartel had an extensive in-country transport network consisting of Colombian brokers and Ecuadorian transporters working directly for the Cartel’s leaders on a permanent basis.  

But, as these fixed figures became increasingly larger targets for Ecuador’s security forces, the Sinaloa Cartel changed tack. Today, the group rotates coordinators who work with a variety of gangs, specializing in different transport methods, including clandestine drug flights, fast boats, and contaminated containers on large cargo ships. 

“It is a form of outsourcing,” Ecuadorian security expert, Maria Fernanda Revelo, told InSight Crime. 

This system of changing representatives and short-term contractual alliances makes Sinaloa’s operations a moving, ever-changing target that is difficult to track or dismantle. 

Since the turn of the decade, the Sinaloa Cartel’s primary rival, the CJNG, has also begun operating in Ecuador. 

Like the Sinaloa Cartel, its presence seems to be concentrated in coastal provinces like Manabi and Santa Elena, but less is known about the group’s modus operandi, partly because they are relatively new. 

Around the same time that the CJNG came on the scene, some of Ecuador’s smaller gangs, including the Chone Killers, the Tiguerones, and the Lobos, broke ties with the Choneros and forged an alliance against them, which they called “Nueva Generación,” reportedly in honor of their ties to the CJNG. This is sometimes cited as evidence that Mexican groups are fighting a proxy war in Ecuador.   

But these alliances are volatile and seem more motivated by internal competition for routes, networks, and recognition, rather than any external forces. The Nueva Generación alliance fell apart in the second half of 2023 with the Tiguerones and Chone Killers re-aligning themselves with the Choneros, according to OECO coordinator Renato Rivera-Rhon. 

“But they’ve achieved new legitimacy. They’ve come back as allies and partners, not subordinates to the Choneros,” he said.

Albanian Networks

Albanian networks are another key player in Ecuador and use the country as a base for their Latin American operations. Though often referred to as the “Albanian Mafia,” these networks consist of decentralized family clans and individuals whose relationships with each other and with Ecuadorian groups are fluid.

They have had a presence in Ecuador since at least 2009 when an Albanian national was charged with setting up a front company to ship cocaine to Europe, as a representative of Italy’s powerful ‘Ndrangheta mafia. In the 15 years since, Albanian networks have gone independent.

Albanian agents in Ecuador are often linked to decentralized networks, like “Kompania Bello” and Clan “Farruku,” with tentacles in other Latin American countries and Europe. But these agents are rarely part of a hierarchical structure and though they often work together, they are sometimes competitive, and violently so. 

SEE ALSO: Ecuador Prison Quietly Released Top Albanian Cocaine Kingpin

Their primary goal in Ecuador is to negotiate deals with Colombian suppliers and Ecuadorian dispatch networks and to launder money. Albanians’ relationships with local groups are purely operational and nonexclusive: they will contract whatever Ecuadorian group can provide the service they need with the best guarantee and at the lowest price. 

Because most cocaine travels to Europe on container ships, their operations are concentrated in the port of Guayaquil and other zones in Guayas and El Oro.

Though their presence is sometimes transitory, many Albanian emissaries have taken up longer-term residency in Ecuador, acquiring wood and fruit companies, as well as import/export businesses, as a way to launder illicit profits and move cocaine. They have also been known to get their hands dirty, carrying out their own assassinations instead of hiring local guns. 

In the February 2024 operation, Ecuadorian authorities launched a massive operation against the network of Dritan Gjika’s, alias “Tonny.” Gjika, a trafficker who embodies the Albanian broker model in South America, remains on the run.  

He had been based in Ecuador since 2009 and, by the time police arrested over 30 members of his network, it spanned Ecuador, Spain, and the United Kingdom and shipped cocaine to the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, Russia, Romania, and Albania. 

Gjika had direct “contractual” links to Colombian laboratories, who supplied him with four tons of cocaine monthly in Ecuador, according to European and Ecuadorian police. He hired Ecuadorian transporters to move that cocaine to storage points in Cotopaxi, El Oro, Santa Elena, Azuay, Pichincha, and Guayas. 

Together with his Ecuadorian business partners, Gjika owned fruit companies used as a front to export cocaine to Europe, concealing smaller cocaine loads, from 15 to 40 kilograms, within banana shipments. Larger shipments were hidden in containers leaving from the port of Guayaquil for European ports. Depending on his needs, Gjika hired several Ecuadorian service providers and is known to have worked with both Adolfo Macías, alias “Fito,” one of the country’s largest drug traffickers and leader of the Choneros, and with Samir Maestre Mena, alias “Samir,” who had a reputation as an accountant to the traffickers before his murder in October 2023.