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Investigation: How the Albanian mafia operates in Latin America

2026-05-24 22:08:02Aktualitet SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Investigation: How the Albanian mafia operates in Latin America
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By Gavin Voss - Insightcrime

The recent arrest of suspected Albanian drug trafficker Ervin Mata in Brazil is the latest example of how criminal service providers originating from the Balkans operate in Latin America.

Mata, who was arrested on April 26 near São Paulo, is accused of serving as a bridge between South American suppliers and European buyers for a Balkan criminal organization that oversaw cocaine shipments from Brazil to Europe through ports in countries such as Spain and Germany.

Mata is part of a long list of Balkan drug traffickers who have been arrested or killed in Latin America. These criminal actors — who hail from countries like Albania, Serbia and Montenegro, with a history of powerful mafias — have become key players in cocaine trafficking and money laundering schemes in the region.

Instead of building territorial strongholds like traditional Latin American criminal groups, Balkan criminals have integrated along an increasingly fragmented cocaine supply chain, managing the routes, logistics, and relationships needed to move cocaine from production centers in the Andes to growing consumption markets in Europe.

Below, we explain the main roles that Balkan criminal actors fill in the region.

envoys

Criminal groups of Balkan origin have consolidated themselves as key gatekeepers of Europe's growing cocaine market. They distribute cocaine to cities across the continent, supplying local criminal organizations and wholesale buyers.

Balkan criminal networks are typically decentralized, based on family loyalties and business alliances rather than membership in a specific, easily identifiable criminal group. To negotiate deals, they send individuals to drug-producing and exporting countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil, where they negotiate deals with producers and collaborate with local groups that move and store the drugs. In this way, the emissaries eliminate local middlemen, increasing profits for their organization. Mata, who Albanian authorities believe is linked to a Balkan criminal organization, appears to have been one of these figures.

Covering the cocaine route to Europe

But there are others. One of them was Dritan Rexhepi, an Albanian criminal whose long career included prison escapes in Italy and Belgium. He was a high-profile emissary for the Bello Company, an Albanian network of 14 crime families. Rexhepi was arrested in Ecuador along with a cocaine shipment in 2014, but continued to coordinate shipments with Colombian and Ecuadorian criminal groups from behind bars until his release in 2021. Rexhepi was then arrested in Turkey in 2023 and is currently facing trial in Albania. While Europol claimed to have fully dismantled the Bello Company in 2020, several former members continue to be important players in the cocaine trade in Latin America.

In another example, Clan Farruku, an Albanian family-based criminal organization, coordinated cocaine shipments between Ecuador and Spain. They allegedly sent emissaries to Ecuador to coordinate with Ecuadorian groups to export cocaine. One of these emissaries, Ergys Dashi, was killed in the port city of Guayaquil in February 2022, just days after Spanish authorities seized two tons of cocaine in Cádiz, which was later linked to Clan Farruku.

Independent traffic specialists

In other cases, Balkan criminals in Latin America act independently and opportunistically, leveraging their business skills and personal connections with manufacturers, local networks, and wholesale buyers in Europe, rather than working on behalf of a specific European-based group.

Dritan Gjika, an Albanian who moved to Ecuador and later became an Ecuadorian citizen, was one of these influential independent traffickers. Gjika had no proven ties to any Balkan criminal group. Instead, he allegedly formed alliances directly with Colombian producers and collaborated with Ecuadorian groups that moved, stored, and contaminated shipping containers of cocaine in Guayaquil. As a cover for his trafficking activities, Gjika allegedly created a network of legitimate export companies that shipped products such as bananas — one of Ecuador’s main exports — to European ports.

The pioneering Albanian trafficker who conquered the drug trade in Ecuador

Gjika's reach also included negotiating the price of cocaine shipments to Europe with a number of wholesale buyers based in port cities across the continent, according to text messages seen by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Gjika was arrested in June 2025 in Abu Dhabi and is awaiting extradition to Ecuador, where he is wanted on charges of organized crime and corruption.

Gjika was not the only Albanian in Ecuador to carve out a niche in the cocaine trade as an independent actor. Adriatik Tresa and Arber Çekaj used models similar to Gjika's, creating their own export businesses in Ecuador that served as a cover for cocaine trafficking.

Both are suspected of hiding cocaine in banana shipments headed to Europe. Tresa was shot dead in a suburb of Guayaquil in 2020, while Çekaj was arrested in Germany in 2018.

Financial crime experts

Whether affiliated with a group or independent, many Balkan criminal actors in Latin America have specialized in laundering money from their drug trafficking operations or from working for local or European groups.

Gjika, the Albanian independent trafficker, used his front companies to launder over $31 million through Ecuador's financial system between 2015 and 2024, according to prosecutors.

In November 2025, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on 27 individuals and entities linked to a Mexico-based money laundering scheme run by the Albanian Hysa crime family. U.S. authorities allege that the network — which operated with the Sinaloa Cartel — laundered drug money through casinos and luxury restaurants in Sinaloa, Sonora and other Mexican states.

Money laundering was also a key criminal activity of Serbian national Jezdimir Srdan, who, after securing a controversial early release from prison in Ecuador on drug trafficking charges in 2018, was recaptured in 2024 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for money laundering.


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