If you quit, you're dead” - BBC for Albanian mafia: Drug Owners in Ecuador

Those are the words of a Latin Kings gang member, with whom the BBC opens an article on narcotics and its increasingly role in Albanian clans in Ecuador.

The person interviewed, introduced by the name Cesar, says he was recruited by a corrupt police team to work for the Albanian mafia, whose influence according to the British intelligence network is growing and growing.

Albanian “Mafia has extended its presence in Ecuador in recent years, drawn by traffic routes the country offers, and now controls most of the cocaine flow from South America to Europe”, the BBC writes in the online edition.

Although Ecuador does not produce drugs, 70 percent of the cocaine that circulates around the world stems from its ports has declared President Daniel Noboa.

Narcotics are introduced in the country by Colombia and Peru, two neighboring countries, and two of the world's largest cocaine producers.

According to local police, the selection of record drug quantities last year shows narcotics exports are on the rise.

The Albanians needed someone to solve their problems. I knew port guards, truck drivers and camera monitors, and I helped with bribes”, says Cesar, 36, and joined the gang at the age of 14.

After cocaine arrives in Ecuador from Colombia and Peru, the BBC follows, it is stored until Albanian bosses learn that a container ship will leave the country's ports towards Europe.

Gangs use three main methods of traffic - hiding drugs in cargos before arriving at ports, opening containers in port, or tying drugs into ships.

“If you don't do the job properly to ask Albanians, they kill”, Cesar further says.

Criminal groups, including those of other ethnicities, are attracted to Ecuador for its whereabouts and legal exports, which make up a good way to hide illegal loads.

Banana exports make up 66 percent of the containers leaving Ecuador, about 30 percent of which reach the European Union, where cocaine consumption is increasing.

Citing Albanian boss Dritan Gjika, considered among the most powerful Albanian mafia in Ecuador, local authorities say he had shares in the fruit company in Ecuador and import companies in Europe, which he used for drug trafficking.

Lawyer Monica Luzarraga, who defended one of Djika's partners, has declared that in recent years the export of fathers to Albania has reached its peak.

About 300 tons of drugs were seized last year in Ecuador, the amount that according to the Interior Ministry marked another annual record./Periscopi/