A global boom in cocaine trafficking defies decades of anti-drug efforts (original) (raw)

GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador — The drug lord had already escaped the law in three countries, and he planned to do it again.

In less than a decade, Dritan Rexhepi had built a smuggling business that ran from the fields of Colombia to the ports of Ecuador and on to the streets of Europe, Italian and Latin American investigators said, rivaling the influence of Mexico’s powerful cartels. His brand, carved into cocaine packages, was “Bello” — beautiful.

The Albanian’s rise from gunman in his home country to transatlantic kingpin is part of a global explosion in the cocaine industry, a trade that is far bigger and more geographically diverse than at any point in history. South America now produces more than twice as much cocaine as it did a decade ago. Cultivation of coca crops in Colombia, the origin of most of the world’s cocaine, has tripled, according to U.S. figures, and the amount of land used to grow the drug’s base ingredient is more than five times what it was when the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993.

And production keeps soaring. A record 2,757 tons of cocaine was produced worldwide in 2022, a 20 percent increase over 2021, according to the most recent global drug report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

“It’s going up and up and up,” said Thomas Pietschmann, a research officer at the UNODC. “A few years ago, people were saying the future is synthetic drugs. … Right now, it’s still cocaine.”

For decades, cocaine consumers were primarily Americans, and interdiction was a U.S. government priority. But despite the tens of billions of dollars spent in the U.S. war on drugs in Latin America, the industry has not only grown, it has globalized, with new routes, new markets and new criminal enterprises.

Nearly every one of Latin America’s mainland nations has become a major producer or mover of the drug, with Ecuador now one of the most important cocaine transit points in the world. Demand is soaring in Europe, which rivals the United States as the world’s top cocaine destination. Cocaine seizures in E.U. countriesgrew fivefoldbetween 2011 and 2021, and exceeded those in the United States in 2022.While the United States remains a huge market, cocaine use has declined by about 20 percent since 2006, according to UNODC.

Balkan, Italian, Turkish and Russian criminal groups have all swept into Latin America for a piece of the action. Few have managed to muscle their way into cocaine trafficking quite like Albanian criminal networks, investigators and analysts say.

“We know there’s not only one channel for cocaine,” said Marco Martino, a senior Italian police official in charge of coordinating counternarcotics operations. But “the Albanians,” he said, “are the best and the biggest.”

As cocaine production was exploding, investigators said, Albanian criminal networks rode the opportunity it presented. They were critical to getting the drug to Europe and fueling consumption across the continent.

Rexhepi, 44,built much of his empire from an Ecuadorian prison cell, fostering connections with Latin American gangs and turning his cellblock into an executive suite. A lawyer representing him in Albania declined to comment. Rexhepi, in a 2015 appeal, denied any involvement in drug trafficking, “either as a perpetrator, accomplice or accessory.” But in 2021, Italy sought his extradition, warning the authorities in Ecuador in a letter from its embassy in Quito that Rexhepi was the “undisputed leader” of an Albanian drug trafficking network with global reach and access to “infinite quantities of cocaine.”

Rexhepi’s emergence as a feared power broker within a federal prison in Cotopaxi province was symptomatic of the collapse of government control in Ecuador. But with the authorities in Rome seeking to imprison him for drug trafficking, he decided it was time to move again.

A local judge, citing a medical need, ordered him into home detention in an upscale neighborhood here in the port city of Guayaquil in August 2021, according to Ecuadorian officials.

Then, predictably, Rexhepi vanished.

This investigation into the global expansion of the cocaine business and the rise of Albanian drug traffickers is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former officials in Ecuador, Colombia, Europe and the United States, gang members in Ecuador, and thousands of pages of court documents from Ecuador, Albania and Italy. It reveals how criminal networks led by Albanians infiltrated Ecuador’s ports, judiciary, prison system and security forces to gain control of key parts of the cocaine supply chain and trigger a deluge of the drug in Europe — a more than $12 billion annual cocaine market, according to the E.U. Drugs Agency.

“With these profits, these organizations manage to permeate all public and private institutions, corrupting any structure,” said Ecuador’s formeranti-narcotics director, Gen. Willian Villarroel, in an interview.

Drug trafficking entrepreneurs from Albania, a country of only about 2.8 million people, have begun to rival the world’s most powerful cartels by working with them, not against them, transforming how the trade is run. The new networks, investigators say, are often criminal coalitions of disparate and independent groups, rather than hierarchical, violently competitive cartels.

Europol is aware of dozens of “Albanian-speaking” clans or organized criminal networks currently operating in Europe, Robert Fay, the head of Europol’s drug unit, said in an interview.

“It’s not about how many people you have,” said Fatjona Mejdini, an Albanian analyst with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. “It’s about the right alliances you can form.”

From his prison cell in Ecuador, Rexhepi paved the way. He befriended leaders of Ecuador’s most powerful gang, Los Choneros, who were already working for Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, according to one of the gang’s founding members, who, like some others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of security concerns.

That led to strategic partnerships with both South American traffickers and gang leaders across Europe. His goal was simple, investigators and analysts said: sell as much cocaine as possible with abundant profit for all parties to the deals.

“Rexhepi is the pioneer,” Mejdini said.

Soaring cocaine production

The explosion in cocaine production can be traced back to the demobilization of Colombia’s largest leftist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). A historic peace deal with the country’s government in 2016 ended the longest-running civil conflict in the hemisphere, a conflict in which the United States played a critical role.

Since the start of the counternarcotics and security package known as Plan Colombia in 2000, the United States has sent about $14 billion in funding to Colombia, at least 60 percent of it for the military and police. The plan focused in large part on combating the country’s cocaine production and export, which the FARC controlled, using the proceeds to fund its insurgency and secure territory.

When the guerrillas laid down their weapons, a proliferation of smaller armed groups, driven by profit rather than ideology, swept into coca-producing areas.

These drug traffickers “no longer have political interests,” said Leonardo Correa, the head of the UNODC mission in Colombia. “What they want is to get the drug out as fast as possible, to make the most money possible.”

Instead of sourcing coca leaves from fields in the center of the country, Colombia’s cocaine producers have created “enclaves” near the country’s borders and coasts, to more easily export the drug. These enclaves became a one-stop shop for a process that was previously dispersed — now, the cultivation, extraction and refining of the drug all happen in the same area before it is moved across nearby borders. Three of the fourmost productive enclaves border Ecuador.

Producers have even improved the plant itself, creating remarkably productive hybrid crops that extract more alkaloid from the same quantity of leaves. The government of Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president and a fierce opponent of the U.S.-led “war on drugs,” has vowed to dismantle drug trafficking networks, but it shifted its focus away from the eradication of coca crops. Analysts say this has only further fueled cultivation, and could draw harsh criticism from the incoming Trump administration.

The amount of land used to plant coca in Colombia grew by 10 percent in 2023, but the productivity of that land exploded: Cocaine production grew by 53 percent, according to the UNODC. As a result, these enclaves — making up 14 percent of Colombian territory that has coca crops — produce about 40 percent of the country’s coca, according to the UNODC. This has left other areas of the country struggling to sell their cocacrops.

As Colombian criminal groups industrialized their systems, European mafias offered the prospect of new routes to avoid intensified U.S. patrols along Colombia’s coast. Cocaine started to move in ever bigger quantities through countries including Ecuador, Costa Rica and Paraguay and onto ships bound for Europe.

In Ecuador, a country that does not produce cocaine, authorities seized more of the drug in 2023 than the combined total seizures of Peru and Bolivia, the second- and third-largest production countries. This year, through mid-December, Ecuador seized 251 tons of cocaine, up from 197 last year. More than 81 tons were destined for Europe, compared with only about 18 that were intended for the United States and Mexico.

For just one kilogram of cocaine, worth 2,000orsoinColombia,drugtraffickerscouldearn2,000 or so in Colombia, drug traffickers could earn 2,000orsoinColombia,drugtraffickerscouldearn25,000 by smuggling it to the United States but at least $31,500 if it reached Europe,according to U.N. and E.U. officials.

In 2022, for the sixth year in a row, E.U. states reported a record number of cocaine seizures, with Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands registering the most. Almost 70 percent of those drug seizures were from container ships that arrived from Latin America.

A crucial transit point

It was one of the world’s largest single cocaine seizures on record — and authorities stumbled on it by accident.

In late January, Ecuadorian military officers followed a lead about a cache of weapons and explosives hidden at a pig farm in Los Ríos province. Instead, in an underground cellar, they found 22,000bricks of cocaine — 22 tons in total, a haul valued at more than $660 million on the European market. The packages were labeled with airline logos: Iberia, KLM, Qatar, Jet2.

The cache belonged to an Albanian criminal group, according to intelligence officials andEcuadorian court records.

For an Ecuadorian government that had nearly collapsed due to drug violence, it was hailed as a major blow to the country’s cocaine trade. It also confirmed Ecuador’s global role as a crucial transit point and logistical hub for the world’s most powerful drug traffickers.

Wedged between the cocaine-producing countries of Colombia and Peru, Ecuador became an ideal location for traffickers, investigators said. It had limited coastal surveillance, fragile institutions that were corruptible, lenient visa policies allowing long-term residence for foreigners, and a robust pool of local gangs eager to team up with European groups to transport drugs.

In January 2024, Ecuadorian military officers showed off what amounted to one of the largest global cocaine seizures on record. (Video: Ecuador Army)

The country also boasted a thriving shipping industry. Ecuador is the principal exporter of bananas to Europe, and a free-trade agreement with the E.U. ledbanana exports to grow by 40 percent since 2017, according to E.U. figures. The banana shipping business, making up more than two-thirds of exports leaving Ecuador, provided an ideal form of transit, investigators said.

In 2023, about half of the cocaine seized in containers in Ecuador before departure to Europe was hidden in banana shipments, according to Ecuadorian authorities.

The January seizure at the pig farm also illustrated the Albanian trafficking model, intelligence officials said, with third-party associates contracted for each link in the cocaine supply chain.

Colombian armed groups handle the production and transport across the border, and Ecuadorian gangs take it from there. To move the 22 tons of cocaine, for instance, one gang, Los Lobos, transported the drugs to the underground cellar, according to an intelligence official with knowledge of the case. Another, Los Choneros, was tasked with guarding the drugs, while a third, Los Lagartos, was supposed to smuggle the drugs into the port. Finally, Los Chone Killers were to ensure that it left hidden on a designated container ship.

The escape artist

Rexhepi arrived in Ecuador around 2011, part of a wave of Albanians, many of whom had deep ties to criminal groups in Europe, investigators said. Ecuador was beginning to emerge as a transit hub in the cocaine trade, residency was relatively easy to acquire, and there was little difficulty for foreigners in acquiring property and setting up companies, Ecuadorian officials said.

Rexhepi, who had multiple false identities, landed as a Greek businessman, investigators said.

The son of grape farmers in Velce, an Albanian mountain village, Rexhepi came of age as Ponzi schemes in the late 1990s sparked a devastating economic collapse in Albania. Military armories were pillaged, leading to the rise of criminal gangs that made parts of the country lawless.

“Everyone had guns in the village,” said Rexhepi’s uncle, Arben Jaupaj, 64, who runs a bar in Velce. “The adults and the kids.”

Rexhepi quickly rose within the ranks of one network with continent-wide ambitions, Albanian officials said. He was arrested in 2006in the late 1990s slayings ofa police officer and a bystander. In an act that turned Rexhepi into a household name in Albania, he escaped on the day of his arrest from a police station in the seaside city of Durres by simply opening a door with a faulty lock in a basement interrogation room. He waltzed out, telling police officers he encountered that his interview was finished.

“He’s seen as smart, brave and willing to take risks,” said an Albanian law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

In the years that followed, Rexhepi became one of Europe’s most-wanted criminals, pursued from one country to another. He was arrested on drug trafficking charges in the Netherlands and extradited to Italy, where he was sentenced to 13 years in prison. In 2011, he and two other Albanians broke out of a jail near Milan after using contraband saws to file down bars and rappelling out of a window on an impromptu rope made from tied bedsheets. Months later, he was arrested in Spain but extradited to Belgium, where he was wanted for his role in a violent robbery years earlier. But the low-security Belgian prison was no match for Rexhepi. Once again, he escaped, this time by scaling a prison wall.

But staying in Europe was becoming increasingly untenable because of the risk of another arrest, and Rexhepi fled to Ecuador.

Rexhepi built his network by making use of legitimate front companies, according to Italian prosecutors. He started establishing ties to Ecuadorian businesses that would help him build up his smuggling operations and launder money. One of his associates, an Albanian diplomatic vice consul in Ecuador, held large shares in food and cannabis companies, according to public records andan Ecuadorian intelligence analyst who has studied the network.

In just a few years in the city of Guayaquil, Rexhepi and his cohorts built a sophisticated drug logistics system, buying off port staff and shipping companies that allowed them almost free access to containers heading to Europe, investigators said. He formed alliances across the spectrum of criminal groups in the country, they said, by selling Europe as a new, open market where everyone could profit.

The law, however, caught up with Rexhepi again, and in 2014, he was arrested in Guayaquil, charged with drug trafficking and eventually sentenced to 13 years in prison. The prison system in Ecuador was largely run by the gangs, and Rexhepi continued to build his business, investigators said.

His uncle, Jaupaj, said his nephew claims he was falsely accused, and that he was simply running a seafood business in Ecuador.

In a 2015 appeal, Rexhepi — using the fake name Murataj Lulezim — accused Ecuadorian authorities of confusing him with another man and depriving him of his freedom “in an unjust way, without a single piece of evidence against me or a single photo that proves any trace of participation.”

“My only sin, so to speak, is that I am an Albanian citizen, and I came to this country because of the publicity abroad, promoting investment.”

Descent into lawlessness

In September 2020, following a five-year investigation, hundreds of officers across Europe conducted a large sting against Rexhepi’s operations — arresting 20 individuals in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Spain, Albania and Dubai.

Italian authorities sent a series of letters to Ecuadorian officials, urging them to begin extradition proceedings against Rexhepi. In one 2021 letter from the Italian Embassy, which wasreviewed by The Washington Post, diplomats warned that Rexhepi organized transatlantic drug shipments and ordered the murder of rivals “thanks to a dense network of complicity and corruption, from prison, using all types of communication systems.”

But Rexhepi had his own plans. In August 2021, a Guayaquil judge, Diego Poma, granted Rexhepi house arrest for “medical reasons” with an ankle monitor, according to the court order. Days later, the judge ordered the removal of the ankle monitor and instructed Rexhepi to report to the authorities every 15 days. The judge was later dismissed by the country’s judiciary council, which found that he had violated the independence of judicial servants in several decisions benefiting powerful drug lords. Poma, in his disciplinary process, denied wrongdoing and said he followed all legal protocols in making his decisions.

In 2023, Rexhepi’s releasewas denounced publicly by presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio as another example of Ecuador’s descent into lawlessness; several months later, Villavicencio, who promised to take on the country’s narco gangs, was assassinated.

By then, it had become clear just how much power Albanian drug traffickers wielded in Ecuador. Another prominent Albanian drug trafficker, Dritan Gjika, had established a sprawling web of business and political connections, investigators found, allegedly under the protection of Ecuador’s head of police. Some European intelligence officials said they suspect Gjika may be part of Rexhepi’s network.

In January, Ecuadorian gangs unleashed a wave of violence that targeted the country’s institutions and media. The country’s new president, Daniel Noboa, responded by declaring a state of internal armed conflict against the gangs, mobilizing the military to bring control to the country’s cities and prisons. The government has since touted an 18 percent drop in the murder rate, but kidnapping and extortion have continued to rise, and human rights organizations have accused the government of arresting thousands with little evidence of due process.

The drop in killings, said Renato Rivera, coordinator of Ecuador’s Organized Crime Observatory, “is not a response to the militarization, but rather to the peace processes and criminal alliances” between gangs. Despite the president’s declaration of internal armed conflict, the country’s most powerful criminal structures — such as the Albanians — remain “exactly the same,” he added.

“These transnational groups have not really been affected,” Rivera said.

New markets in Africa and Asia

The cocaine lords continue to adapt, diversify and flourish.

As law enforcement authorities in Europe have intensified interdiction operations, particularly at major ports in Northern Europe, drug traffickers appear to be shifting to other points of entry. The Netherlands and Belgium, home to the largest ports in Europe, seized about half as much cocaine in the first half of 2024 as they did in the same period last year.

Spain, which has continued to seize record amounts of cocaine, appears to be surpassing Belgium and the Netherlands as Europe’s most important gateway for cocaine. Sweden and Norway also reported record cocaine seizures at ports in 2023, according to the E.U. Drugs Agency. Germany saw its cocaine seizures more than double between 2022 and 2023, according to the UNODC.

Traffickers are increasingly using labs in Europe to process cocaine or to separate it from other materials used to conceal it. The E.U. reported dismantling 39 cocaine laboratories across member states in 2022, up from at least 16 in 2019; one lab, discovered by authorities in Spain in 2023, was turning out 200 kilograms (almost 450 pounds) of cocaine every day.

New markets beyond Europe continue to open up in response to the surfeit of cocaine. Australia reported the highest annual prevalence of cocaine use in the world, according to the UNODC, though wastewater data suggests most cocaine consumers only use the drug occasionally. In early December, Australian authorities seized over two tons of cocaine, the country’s largest-ever seizure of the drug. Just days earlier, the Colombian navy announced the capture of six “narco-subs” carrying more than 225 tons of cocaine, including one carrying five tons of cocaine to Australia.

While data for Asia is limited, cocaine consumption and seizures are rising in China and Japan, the UNODC reports. It has also noted increases in seizures in India, Malaysia and the Philippines, suggesting they could emerge as growth centers for traffickers. If Asia’s rates of consumption were to someday align with Europe’s, the number of regular cocaine users there could shoot up from 2 million to over 40 million, according to the UNODC.

“It’s the kids of the upper classes who take it,” Pietschmann, the UNODC research officer, said. “The potential is there. … There is a young generation there, the young generation has money, and the young generation goes to parties.”

Cocaine seizures have also reached record levels in Africa, where the Brazilian criminal group Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) has expanded its presence and used several countries,including Mozambique, Angola and Cape Verde,as stopovers for shipping cocaine to Europe, according to the UNODC.

Albanian criminal groups have reportedly begun establishing networks in Australia, exploiting weaknesses in the country’s immigration system and capitalizing on a burgeoning market with high cocaine prices, according to Australian officials.

The Albanians have been able to perfect their operation just about anywhere, Mejdini said.

“There’s no limit for them anymore,” Mejdini said. “The model they have created, to forge alliances, to cooperate with other foreigners, it helps them go everywhere. Wherever there is demand, they are going to be the delivery guys.”

Some analysts speculate that Turkey, where officials reported a 45 percent increase in cocaine seizures between 2020 and 2021, could become a crucial corridor for moving the drug east.

That’s where authorities found Rexhepi in November 2023, two years after he was released from prison in Ecuador. He was arrested in response to extradition requests from Italy and Albania.

The kingpin had traded one life of luxury for another, after arriving in Turkey on a Colombian passport under the alias Benjamin Omar Perez Garcia and settling into a white villa in a seaside suburb of Istanbul, authorities said.

He remains behind bars in Turkey — for now.

Faiola reported from Tirana, Albania, and Rome. Fjori Sinoruka in Tirana and Stefano Pitrelli in Rome contributed to this report. Graphics by Júlia Ledur.