The Albanian mafia in soccer

Héctor Salomón Pesantes Sangurima, a discharged police officer, founded Agusepro, a private security company with more than 340 employees, well regarded at the time, that served the Guayas Sports Federation and the Ecuadorian Electricity Corporation, Celec. The Criminals and Contractors investigation by Connectas traced the company's state contracts worth 2.4 million dollars, mostly with Celec, during the government of Guillermo Lasso. Celec is one of the state companies that, in El Gran Padrino, appeared under the control of Danilo Carrera's circle. And Celec was hiring him while the police already had Pesantes under investigation: since 2021, in Operation León de Troya.

When the Spanish police forced Operation Pampa in February 2024, Pesantes appeared in the news as part of the Albanian mafia in Ecuador, under the alias Glock. His role, according to the authorities: coordinating shipments and facilitating trafficking logistics. According to the sources for this investigation, his specialty was containers, contaminating them, and he also provided Gjika with security rings to evade justice. On the day of the operation, those sources say, he was in charge of detecting when the authorities were closing in on Gjika's perimeter and getting him out: there were 30 arrests and 42 raids, but Gjika was not caught. In January 2025 a court sentenced Pesantes to seven years for money laundering, as part of a network that moved 43 million between 2015 and 2023. When we published this investigation he was free.

Agusepro did not close. It changed hands: the shares passed to Pedro Pesantes, Héctor's brother-in-law and cousin, as had happened with other companies in Gjika's network. Banco Pichincha, alerted by the Financial and Economic Analysis Unit, closed the accounts of Pesantes and his companies. Two were left: a foundation and a soccer club.

Club Profesional Astillero Fútbol Club was founded in Guayaquil in January 2022, in the second division. The Sports Ministry document of October 26, 2023, records its board: president, Héctor Pesantes; vice president, Patricia Pilar Pesantes Cepeda, owner of 13 percent of Agusepro; treasurer, Héctor Alexander Pesantes, his son and manager of Agusepro; first board member, Javier Pesantes, his brother. Four of ten seats. In December 2024 the club sent a new report to the ministry and all the Pesanteses vanished from the board; in April 2025 it changed its name to Club Deportivo Especializado Astilleros Fútbol Club, with María Elizabeth Palma as president. According to sources, she is a front: Pesantes still runs the club.

The 26 teams in Serie A and Serie B fall under the Liga Pro, which has a transparency department, requires banked transactions and reports to the UAFE. Below that line are more than 200 clubs that answer to no one. The Ecuadorian Football Federation does little oversight, and what little it does, it does badly. It is a zone where millions can move without anyone asking a question. Former U.S. ambassador Michael Fitzpatrick said Ecuadorian soccer was being contaminated by drug trafficking; when asked for names, the embassy did not give them.

For weeks we reviewed hundreds of files provided by a source: payrolls, income records, accounting documents. They show two realities. In the banked books a player earns 460 dollars. In the real ones salaries double, quadruple or multiply tenfold: that same player receives 2,500 a month. The difference is paid in cash. More than 80 percent of the payroll and 90 percent of other expenses are paid that way, with no transfer and no bank trail. The parallel books have existed since the sports complex was built.

The club's sports complex, one large field and one small one, went up in 2022 and, according to our sources, cost more than half a million dollars. All in cash: there is not a single record of how it was paid. The fields are also the justification: the club declares between 30,000 and 50,000 dollars a month in rentals, at 80 dollars an hour for the large field and 50 for the small one. Reaching 30,000 would take 600 hours a month, the field booked twenty hours a day, Monday through Sunday. Sponsorships add up to about 100,000 a year, and in 2023 and 2024 they came from Pesantes's own companies: Agusepro, a shrimp farm and a gym. According to sources inside the club, the money arrives in boxes and envelopes with orders to justify it, and Pesantes is the one who comes to the offices, gives the instructions and brings the boxes. They keep no paperwork.

The investigation was published on February 4, 2026, on Boscán and Velásquez's morning show; the report also circulates as a standalone video. The documents cited have been made available to the authorities. They are not shown in full because they would reveal the source. The Attorney General's Office accused Agusepro of running a network of the Albanian mafia and Pesantes was convicted; there is no known case against the club and no new rule for the second division. Gjika remains jailed in the United Arab Emirates awaiting an extradition that may never come. It is the same lack of oversight that allowed 71 companies in Gjika's network to stay active after El Gran Padrino.