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Dritan Gjika is considered by authorities to be one of the main figures in international cocaine trafficking and the person who led the Albanian criminal network established in Ecuador. SPAK identifies him as the leader of the group recently hit as part of the narcotics and money laundering investigations.
Gjika, 47, was arrested in Abu Dhabi in 2025. According to Ecuadorian migration records, he first entered the country in 2009 with temporary visitor status.
Ecuadorian authorities subsequently listed him among the most wanted people in the country, accusing him of leading a criminal organization with reach in Ecuador and Spain. According to investigations, the network trafficked large quantities of cocaine to Central American countries and the European market, particularly in the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain.
The investigative file describes an organized structure with management, logistical and operational levels, where various associates were involved in the transportation, financing and distribution of narcotics. To hide the origin of income and financial movements, the group allegedly used legitimate commercial companies as a cover for criminal activity.
According to authorities, over $43 million was laundered through this scheme, money that allegedly originated from the activities of the Albanian cocaine mafia in Latin America and Europe.
He first appeared in Ecuador in 2009 and in 2013 registered his Ecuadorian identity card in the city of Guayaquil, which has since been considered his official residence. His first documented activity as a businessman began in 2014, when he bought shares in the company “Cresmark”, an exporter of agricultural products, in which another Albanian, Erjon Spahiu, was also a partner. This was just the beginning of an operation that would involve a series of companies with different names, but with the same goal: laundering money and hiding drugs in fruit shipments.
On June 17, 2021, Gjika founded eight companies in a single day with Rubén Cherres, an Ecuadorian businessman with strong political connections who was later brutally murdered in 2023 in Santa Elena. Gjika and Cherres created a total of 13 companies, mostly in the construction and real estate sectors. Their companies were investigated for non-compliance with anti-money laundering laws, while Gjika's name would later appear in a dossier published by Ecuadorian media, which included figures close to former President Guillermo Lasso.
According to Ecuadorian and Spanish authorities, Gjika had built a criminal structure that sent cocaine from Colombian laboratories to Ecuador, where it was stored in large quantities in the provinces of Cotopaxi, Los Ríos and Guayas. From there, the drug was loaded into banana shipments and exported to countries such as Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey and Albania. In Albania alone, in 2021, cocaine shipments were seized in containers coming from South America on several occasions, including 10 kilograms at the port of Durrës, with the orderer being the company “Alba Exotic Fruit”, also mentioned in previous investigations in Greece for a similar case with 137 kg of cocaine.
Meanwhile, audio recordings of Gjika's conversations with people close to the government were circulating in the media. In a report by the Ecuadorian Prosecutor's Office, his name was directly linked to the "León de Troya" file, an investigation into drug trafficking and corruption that also involved Danilo Carrera, the brother-in-law of former President Lasso. However, in January 2022, the Prosecutor's Office requested the closure of the investigation, stating that criminal elements were missing. This allowed Gjika to continue his illegal activity without interference.
The investigation involving him was resumed after the murder of his partner Cherres, and culminated in the police operations “La Pampa” and “Gran Fénix XIII”, carried out in cooperation between Ecuadorian and Spanish authorities. The final operation, carried out on February 6, 2024, identified Dritan Gjika as the leader of the criminal organization, but he was not arrested at that time. It was discovered that through his companies and the people involved, he had laundered over $30 million in the Ecuadorian financial system.
In 2023, before the investigations were publicly revealed and the audio of the scandals was broadcast, Gjika fled to Turkey and was then suspected of having crossed over to Dubai.
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