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Washington Post: Albanians surpass Escobar, dominate global cocaine trafficking boom!

2024-12-28 15:39:35Aktualitet SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

Washington Post: Albanians surpass Escobar, dominate global cocaine trafficking

Guayaquil, Ecuador - The drug lord had 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 stretched from the fields of Colombia to the ports of Ecuador and the streets of Europe, Italian and Latin American investigators said, rivaling the influence of Mexico's powerful cartels. His brand, engraved on packages of cocaine, was "Bello" - beautiful.

The Albanian's rise from gunman in his own country to transatlantic kingpin is part of a global boom in the cocaine industry, a trade that is far larger 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.

The cultivation of coca crops in Colombia, the origin of most of the world's cocaine, has tripled, according to US figures, and the amount of land used to grow the drug's basic ingredient is five times more than during the time of notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar, who was killed in 1993.

And production continues to grow. A record 2,757 tons of cocaine were produced worldwide in 2022, a 20 percent increase compared to 2021, according to the latest global drug report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

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

For decades, cocaine users were predominantly American, and prohibition was a priority for the US government. But despite tens of billions of dollars spent on the US war on drugs in Latin America, the industry has not only grown but globalized, with new routes, new markets and new criminal enterprises.

Almost every continental Latin American nation has become a major producer or mover of the drug, with Ecuador now one of the world’s most important cocaine transit points. Demand is growing in Europe, which rivals the United States as the world’s leading destination for cocaine. Cocaine seizures in EU countries increased fivefold between 2011 and 2021 and surpassed those in the United States in 2022. While the United States remains a major market, cocaine use has fallen by about 20 percent since 2006, according to the UNODC.

Balkan, Italian, Turkish and Russian criminal groups have all been involved in Latin America for some part of the action. Few have managed to get into the cocaine trade as well as Albanian criminal networks, investigators and analysts say.

"We know that there is not just one channel for cocaine," said Marco Martino, a senior Italian police official in charge of coordinating anti-narcotics operations. But "the Albanians," he said, "are the best and the biggest."

As cocaine production exploded, investigators said, Albanian criminal networks seized the opportunity it offered. They were critical of shipping the drug to Europe and promoting consumption across the continent.

Rexhepi, 44, built most of his empire from an Ecuadorian prison cell, forging connections with Latin American gangs and turning his cell block into an executive suite.

A lawyer representing him in Albania declined to comment. Rexhepi, in a 2015 statement, denied any involvement in drug trafficking, “whether as a perpetrator, accomplice or accessory.” But in 2021, Italy requested his extradition, warning 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 “endless quantities of cocaine.”

Rexhepi's emergence as a fearsome power broker inside a federal prison in Cotopaxi province was symptomatic of the government's erosion of control in Ecuador. But with 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 released and placed under house arrest in a wealthy neighborhood here in the port city of Guayaquil in August 2021, according to Ecuadorian officials.

Then, as one might imagine, Rexhepi disappeared.

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 Albanian-led criminal networks infiltrated Ecuador’s ports, judiciary, prison system and security forces to gain control of key parts of the cocaine supply chain and flood Europe with drugs – a cocaine market worth more than $12 billion a year, according to the EU.

"With these profits, these organizations manage to penetrate all public and private institutions, corrupting every structure," Ecuador's former anti-narcotics director, General Willian Villarroel, said in an interview.

Drug traffickers 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 the way the trade is conducted. The new networks, investigators say, are often criminal coalitions of diverse and independent groups, rather than hierarchical and violently competitive cartels.

Europol is aware of dozens of "Albanian-speaking" clans or organized criminal networks currently operating in Europe, Robert Fay, head of Europol's drugs unit, said in an interview.

"It's not about how many people you have," said Fatjona Mejdini, an Albanian analyst at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime. "It's about the right alliances you can create."

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 several others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.

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

"Rexhepi is the pioneer," said Mejdini.

New markets in Africa and Asia

The cocaine lords continue to adapt, diversify and thrive.

As law enforcement authorities in Europe have stepped up their crackdowns, particularly at major ports in Northern Europe, drug traffickers appear to be shifting to other entry points. The Netherlands and Belgium, home to Europe’s largest ports, seized about half as much cocaine in the first half of 2024 as in the same period last year.

Spain, which has continued to seize record amounts of cocaine, appears set to overtake 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 EU Medicines Agency. Germany saw cocaine seizures more than double between 2022 and 2023, according to the UNODC.

Traffickers are increasingly using laboratories in Europe to process cocaine or separate it from other materials used to hide it. The EU reported the dismantling of 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 churning out 200 kilograms (almost 450 pounds) of cocaine every day.

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

While data for Asia is limited, cocaine use and seizures are increasing in China and Japan, UNODC reports. It has also noted increases in seizures in India, Malaysia and the Philippines, suggesting they could emerge as growth hubs for traffickers. If Asia’s consumption rates were to one day match those of Europe, the number of regular cocaine users there could rise from 2 million to over 40 million, according to UNODC.

“It’s the upper-class kids who are taking it,” said Pietschmann, the UNODC research officer. “The potential is there. … There’s a new generation out there, the new generation has money and the new generation goes to parties.”

According to Australian officials, Albanian criminal groups are said to have begun establishing networks in Australia, exploiting weaknesses in the country's immigration system and capitalizing on a booming market with high cocaine prices.

Albanians have been able to perfect their operation almost everywhere, Mejdini said.

“There are no more borders for them,” Mejdini said. “The model they have created, to create alliances, to collaborate with other foreigners, helps them go anywhere. Wherever there is demand, they will be the sender.”

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 the drug's movement east.

Authorities found Rexhepi there 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 'King' 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 coastal suburb of Istanbul, authorities said.

He remains behind bars in Turkey — for now./  Translated by OraNews


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