The companies of the Albanian mafia

To understand this story, you need to know who runs drug trafficking in Ecuador. The local gangs, Choneros, Chonekillers, Tiguerones, Águilas, Fatales, work for international mafias. In the first wave, between 2012 and 2019, the Mexicans were in charge. In the second, the Albanians arrived, gradually pushing the Italian 'Ndrangheta out of cocaine transport and taking over the routes to the United Kingdom, the main gateway for drugs into Europe. Drug trafficking is not just growing coca and shipping it out by boat: it is an industry that needs companies, exporters, banana producers, haulers, cash and money in the banking system.

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Dritan Gjika, an Albanian, arrived in Ecuador in 2009 on a temporary visitor visa. Over thirteen years he traveled dozens of times to Spain, Albania, Germany, Colombia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. The anti-narcotics police identified him as the head of the Albanian mafia in the country, alias Gran Hermano or Tony, in a 2021 intelligence report called León de Troya, which General Giovanni Ponce, the anti-narcotics director kept in his post by Minister Patricio Carrillo, shelved. On January 10, 2023, in the middle of the El Gran Padrino case, La Posta named him for the first time: Rubén Cherres Faggioni, alias Petrolero, the best friend of Danilo Carrera, brother-in-law of President Guillermo Lasso, was Gjika's business partner. They had registered seven companies on the same day, at the same notary's office, as Lasso was being sworn in in May 2021. According to what was published at the time, the network sought posts in Customs, Civil Aviation and BanEcuador and had bought off members of the military. Lasso was never investigated over this. It was the first day the outlet received a direct threat from the Albanian mafia.

The Attorney General's Office, then led by Attorney General Diana Salazar, responded in February 2023 by announcing it would reopen León de Troya as a drug trafficking case. It ended up turning it into the Encuentro case, a political corruption case file with no drug trafficking in it: the Albanian's name dropped out of the proceedings. In late March 2023, Cherres was killed in a house in Punta Blanca, one kilometer from the president's beach house, along with a friend who was visiting him, his partner that weekend and the guard at the gatehouse; someone who knew his hiding place gave him up. Prosecutors charged two hitmen; there is no mastermind. The recordings in which Cherres talked about Tony survived because they were held at an interception center under United States control. After the reopening, La Posta laid out the corporate details: Cherres and Gjika shared Inmobil Real Estate, Drixsa, Drisdard, Trustal, Inmosat, Inducort and a host of construction firms. The Superintendency of Companies dissolved them one by one in May 2023.

A year and two months went by without anyone touching Gjika. In February 2024, Spanish police, who had traced the network's money to four companies in Spain, forced Ecuador to act. The operation was called Gran Fénix; because it sounded like the president's Fénix plan, Diana Salazar's Attorney General's Office renamed it Pampa. Thirty arrests, 42 raids, 48 million euros in assets seized, 36 million of them in Ecuador. Gjika was not caught. According to La Posta's reporting, someone in the Ecuadorian Attorney General's Office tipped him off: a month before the raid he began transferring shares in his companies, and an Ecuavisa report recorded it fifteen days beforehand. Those arrested were minor collaborators; the most important was Julio César Lalangui, alias El Agrónomo. Spanish police found bank certificates: the network had moved 35 million dollars through Ecuadorian banks without a single compliance officer asking questions and without a single report from the UAFE, the financial intelligence unit.

On August 22, 2024, Boscán, by then in exile, ran the exercise: one year and seven months after the first report, what had the state done with the companies? Mónica Velásquez and Cristian Torres went through the Superintendency's records. A construction company in the Sky Building, one of the seven incorporated on the same day, was still active and invoicing. Construador, in liquidation on suspicion of money laundering, had been sold mid-liquidation by Gjika to Carla Lorena Calasanz Valle, daughter of the liquidator the state had appointed, Manuel de Jesús Calasanz Pico; she resold it within twenty days and the company kept operating; it held more than a million dollars in liquid assets. Riomel Gold Corporation, a sand quarry with half a million in shares, had been founded on October 31, 2023, after the allegations, by Gjika and Lalangui, with a permit bearing the signature of the Lasso government. Cresmark, a banana company whose ultimate beneficial owner is Gjika, was still active and operating; the network's leaders drove around in its cars, which were still on the road after the raid. Agricomtrade, another banana company, had passed in February 2024 to El Agrónomo's son.

The day before, the Superintendency had told La Posta that technical and legal reports had been approved to dissolve the companies in the Gran Padrino case; the dissolution was announced on the day of publication. Agricomtrade was dissolved on August 22, 2024. Two weeks later, La Fuente reported that the Superintendency had mapped 71 companies linked to Gjika, 17 with him as manager or shareholder, and that 40 officials oversee 180,000 companies. Boscán also described how the mafia had managed to get two Pampa defendants released and had three more about to walk: he had spoken with a judge in Quito and with two officials from the Attorney General's Office whose names he offered to hand over. When someone leaked it, the Judiciary Council pressured the prosecutor on duty, and the next day prosecutors filed criminal conspiracy charges against two people in Los Ríos; the operation was run by the Judiciary Council with the police because the Attorney General's Office did not want to take part. La Posta identified at least seven Gjika associates who were not prosecuted in Pampa.

At the center of everything that did not happen is a single institution. It was Diana Salazar's Attorney General's Office that decided, in February 2023, that León de Troya would be a political corruption case rather than a drug trafficking one; that a year later renamed the operation that arrived fully built from Spain and presented it as a major blow to organized crime; that left out of the proceedings at least seven Gjika associates identified by La Posta; and that, according to what Boscán published on August 22, 2024, had officials working for the mafia. Boscán was precise about what he was saying and what he was not: the accusation was against people inside the institution, not against the attorney general, and he offered to hand over the names of the two officials he had spoken with. That same day the Attorney General's Office publicly denied that people linked to the Albanian mafia worked there or had obstructed the Pampa case. No one ever collected the names.

In January 2025 a court convicted eight members of the network of money laundering: prosecutors estimated 43 million laundered between 2015 and 2023. One of them, Héctor Salomón Pesantes Sangurima, alias Glock, a former police officer and owner of the security company Agusepro, with 340 employees, received seven years. His role, according to the authorities, was to coordinate shipments and provide logistics; according to La Posta's sources, it was to contaminate containers and set up security rings for Gjika, including on the day of the raid. By February 2026 he was free. Agusepro kept operating: its shares passed to Pedro Pesantes, his brother-in-law and cousin. A Connectas investigation, Criminals and Contractors, traced 2.4 million in state contracts awarded to that company, mostly by Celec, the power utility that appeared under Danilo Carrera's control in El Gran Padrino.

Dritan Gjika was arrested on May 26, 2025, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on an Ecuadorian extradition warrant. Court documents reviewed by OCCRP describe intercepted instructions: keep transfers below 50,000 dollars to avoid alerting the authorities, and use companies in the Emirates and Spain to launder money. In Ecuador, expert Katherine Herrera said on La Posta that the arrest would open the door to the whole structure. As of September 2026 the extradition was still pending. On March 3, 2026, police arrested 16 Ecuadorians linked to the Albanian mafia in the Costa case. Dritan Rexhepi, the other Albanian boss, who was released on a prison benefit and fled, was captured in Turkey in November 2023 and extradited.

Those who exposed it paid a price. Lieutenant Colonel José Luis Erazo, who led León de Troya, ended up under investigation by prosecutors for having investigated the drug traffickers; the journalists who followed the same lead were also targeted. Boscán and Velásquez had been in exile since 2023, facing two half-million-dollar lawsuits from Danilo Carrera for naming him; the hearing in the second was held in February 2026. Jorge Navarrete, from the team, left temporarily because of a drug trafficking investigation. Ecuador remained the main exporter of cocaine to Europe, with 7 percent of money laundering defendants convicted between 2020 and 2022 and 3.5 billion dollars laundered through its financial system in 2021 alone, according to the Organized Crime Observatory and the Global Initiative.

Diana Salazar left the Attorney General's Office in May 2025, a month after her term ended; days later Gjika was arrested in Abu Dhabi. Of the six years her office had the case, what remained was a corruption case file with no drug trafficking, an operation that arrived ready-made from Spain, none of the active companies prosecuted and, only after the publication, a prosecutorial investigation into the network of companies the show had exposed. It was opened by the same institution that had held the case since 2023.