Around midnight on February 6, 2024, Ecuador’s National Police stormed a beige, two-story villa in a luxurious gated community on the outskirts of Guayaquil, the country’s biggest port city.

Inside, they found a mother with her young daughter, along with multiple firearms and ammunition. The husband, Albanian businessman Dritan Gjika, was nowhere to be found.

The raid was part of a much bigger law enforcement sweep. That night, police in Spain and Ecuador arrested 31 alleged members of an intercontinental cocaine trafficking syndicate.

Authorities accused the organization of smuggling tons of cocaine from Colombia through Ecuador to Europe, and linked the network’s members to seizures totaling over 9.5 tons of cocaine. Following the operation, authorities froze assets worth over $51 million.

Gjika, the group’s alleged leader, is accused of building a sophisticated trafficking operation with the help of influential businessmen connected to the highest levels of government and protected by Ecuador’s chief of police.

The Pioneering Albanian Trafficker Who Took Ecuador’s Drug Trade By Storm | Written by Markus Espinoza and Douwe den Held, and read by Victoria Dittmar.

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