Ecuador’s geographic location and other environmental characteristics have long provided incentives for transnational organized crime groups to exploit the country as a drug transshipment point and a logistical safe haven.
Los Choneros is one of Ecuador’s most prominent criminal groups, which first emerged in the late 1990s as a drug trafficking organization based in the city of Manta, a beach…
Long-simmering tensions between prison gangs in Ecuador exploded this week, leaving at least 75 people brutally killed in four prisons across the country.
Drug traffickers engage in a creative game of hide and seek with coast guards and other security forces that board their ships at sea.
Ecuador Profile
Ecuador’s geographic location and other environmental characteristics have long provided incentives for transnational organized crime groups to exploit the country as a drug transshipment point and a logistical safe haven. Ecuador’s diverse transnational criminal landscape, dominated mainly by Colombian criminal and guerrilla groups as well as Mexican cartels, has led some to describe it as the “United Nations” of organized crime.
Once considered one of the most insecure countries in the region, Ecuador has succeeded in tackling certain manifestations of violence in recent years. But drug trafficking through the country is on the rise, paving the way for possible growing insecurity further down the road.
In July 2020, British drug trafficker Robert Dawes was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in one of the most emblematic European drug trafficking cases of the…
While unrest gripped much of Latin America in 2019, it was the coronavirus that took center stage and ripped through the region in 2020, upending everything from commercial trade to…
Within the span of a week, cocaine was discovered in two separate maritime cargo containers bound for Libya, a strong indication that both the north African country and broader region…
The assassination of Albanian national Adriatik Tresa inside his luxury property in Ecuador has revealed details of his alleged criminal activities, painting a picture of violent Albanian drug emissaries operating…
The persistent robbery, extortion, assault and even murder of shrimp farm workers by armed gangs in Ecuador has led the shrimp sector to once more demand gun reforms, in a…
An ongoing gang war in Ecuador’s prisons has made 2020 the bloodiest year on record for inmates, underscoring how the country’s penitentiary system cannot contain the escalating conflict among an…
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