The recent arrest of Albanian cocaine trafficker Dritan Gjika in the United Arab Emirates after more than a decade of operating out of Ecuador suggests that the Gulf state, a hub for international criminals, may not be the safe haven it once was.
Gjika was arrested in the UAE in an Interpol-led operation on May 26, some 14 months after he disappeared from Ecuador ahead of a police raid on his home in Guayaquil, the port city that served as his drug trafficking headquarters for years.
After his arrival in the country in 2009, Gjika “became one of the most wanted men in the country, [and] the leader of a criminal organization that operated in Ecuador and Spain,” Ecuador’s Interior Ministry stated.
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Ecuadorian authorities allege the Albanian was the mastermind behind a drug trafficking network that used front companies to move at least 9.5 tons of cocaine from Colombia to Europe by way of Ecuador. He allegedly received protection from a former head of Ecuador’s police, while his business partner, Rubén Cherres, was a central figure in a far-reaching corruption case involving the brother-in-law of former Ecuador President Guillermo Lasso.
Aside from drug trafficking, Gjika’s network also laundered money through companies domiciled in Spain and the UAE that then made investments in Ecuador, Spain, and other countries, Ecuador’s Attorney General’s Office told InSight Crime. In January, Ecuador convicted eight members of the network for laundering at least $43 million.
InSight Crime Analysis
The role of the United Arab Emirates as a safe haven for traffickers connected to Latin America and the Caribbean’s drug trade seems to be waning.
Over the last five years, there have been a series of arrests in Dubai linked to a network of cooperating drug trafficking organizations, dubbed a “super cartel” by European police.
The first came in 2019, when police arrested the Dutch-Moroccan trafficker Ridouan Taghi for his role in six gangland murders in the Netherlands. He was followed by an Italian cocaine trafficker affiliated with the Camorra mafia, an alleged Panamanian trafficker who organized shipments from the ports of Panama to Europe, and two men working with the Irish Kinahan clan, one of which, Sean McGovern, was the organization’s alleged second-in-command.
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One of the most high-profile traffickers linked to the network, Edin Gačanin, the leader of the Balkan group the Tito and Dino Cartel, was first detained in Dubai in 2022, when he was sentenced to seven years in absentia by Dutch courts. However, he was later released — media reports suggest UAE authorities did not receive an extradition request within 40 days of his arrest — and remained free and operational in Dubai. He was arrested again in March 2025 and now faces extradition to the Netherlands to begin his prison sentence.
Traffickers connected to the so-called “super cartel” are not the only ones to have sought refuge in the UAE. Tyson Quant, the leader of the Curaçaon trafficking group the No Limit Soldiers, was arrested in 2022 in Dubai but was released under unknown circumstances and remains free in the city, Dutch police told InSight Crime.
And Sebastian Marset, the leader of the First Uruguayan Cartel (Primer Cartel Uruguayo – PCU), was arrested in the UAE in 2021 after arriving with a fake Paraguayan passport. He contacted Uruguayan authorities and was swiftly granted a new passport, which led to his quickrelease by UAE police. He disappeared and remains on the run. In 2023, Marset’s partner, Gianina García Troche, was arrested in Madrid after arriving from the UAE.
The UAE offers plenty of opportunities for Latin America’s drug traffickers, according to Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior investigator at the Brookings Institution.
“Places like Dubai are very cosmopolitan, with a significant amount of business, both legal business and illicit, and they’re very comfortable for the expatriate community. It’s an easy place to hide,” she said.
Dubai is the “largest global hub” for illegal gold trading, and one of the world’s major centers for drugs, human smuggling, and human trafficking, according to a 2023report by the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) at George Mason University.
The report also found that Dubai plays a “significant role” in the global offshoring business, helping it become a leading center of money laundering. Limited oversight of the real estate sector offers criminals plentiful money laundering opportunities, it said.
However, the UAE has signed an increasing number of extradition and mutual legal assistance agreements in the last few years. This should improve judicial cooperation with nations seeking the extradition of alleged criminals. In the past, France, Spain and other countries have complained of “absurd” impediments to extradition from the UAE.
Featured Image: The Dubai skyline. Credit: Getty Images.