HomeNewsBriefGuayaquil Remains Ecuador's Busy Cocaine Gateway to Europe
BRIEF

Guayaquil Remains Ecuador's Busy Cocaine Gateway to Europe

COCAINE / 14 OCT 2019 BY SUKANTI BHAVE EN

In an effort to move large quantities of drugs to Europe, traffickers are increasing the flow of cocaine through Ecuador’s port city of Guayaquil -- long a key transshipment point for drugs coming from neighboring countries.

The latest bust occurred at the Guayaquil port on September 5, when police dogs uncovered some 300 kilograms of cocaine concealed in tuna cargo aboard a ship scheduled to stop at ports in Spain and Belgium, El Telégrafo reported. An anti-drug agent said no arrests were made, but that the smuggled cocaine was marked with “X19,” a possible indication of the trafficking group.

Authorities in Ecuador have already seized a total of 55 tons of cocaine in 2019, according to La Hora.

SEE ALSO: Ecuador News and Profiles

Guayaquil, the country’s largest city and home to its largest port, is a major exit point for cocaine, although maritime seizures of drug shipments have increased around the country. In September 2018, Plan V reported that authorities had seized nearly 40 tons of cocaine there during the past two years.

Hiding drugs within shipping cargo has become so common that the technique has been dubbed “gancho ciego,” or “blind hook,” where specific containers are targeted before they are loaded on a ship. The smugglers break the containers’ seal, conceal the drugs inside and then replace the seal with a new one. The result is that the drugs are often stashed among the legal cargo.

For example, in 2018, 270 kilograms of cocaine worth $10.7 million was discovered om canned fish destined for Belgium, 353 kilograms in bananas headed to Russia, and 700 kilograms in shellfish en route to Spain, Plan V reported.

But while "gancho ciego" has proved popular across Ecuador, it is far from the only tactic in use. Drugs are also sent abroad through front export companies, hidden within the structures of shipping containers or attached to the hulls of boats, among others.

InSight Crime Analysis

While Colombia is often the focus of the drug trade, the importance of its neighbor Ecuador as a transshipment point -- especially for cocaine headed to Europe -- cannot be underestimated.

During the recent Organization of American States international commission on drugs, Citizen Security Subsecretary Diego Tipán said that 500 tons of illicit substances were seized in Ecuador between 2014 and 2019. Among non-producer countries, Ecuador seizes the most drugs in the world, he said.

Wedged between Colombia and Peru -- two major cocaine producers – Ecuador and its maritime industry are an attractive target for smugglers.

Nearly a third of Colombian cocaine moves through Ecuador, according to anti-drug officials who spoke with InSight Crime. Cocaine is transported by road from Colombia to Guayaquil, where it is stored in private residences or warehouses until it can be smuggled aboard shipping cargo.

SEE ALSO: More Cocaine Leaving Ecuador Shows Flaws in Anti-Drug Strategies

To improve controls at the Guayaquil port, Ecuador and the United States signed a 2018 agreement that enables US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers to be posted there, according to the State Department’s 2019 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report.

In addition to the port of Guayaquil, Ecuador also sees drugs leave through the port of Puerto Bolivar, where a number of seizures have been made in 2018 and 2019 as well.

Due to limited monitoring capacity, only 3 percent of the shipments leaving its ports are searched, Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), told Business Insider.

According to figures obtained from anti-narcotics officials, of the drugs seized in Ecuador in 2018, 22 percent were in shipments destined for Europe, where demand for cocaine continues to grow.

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

COCAÍNA / 16 MAR 2022

The recent arrests of women transporting cocaine in fake pregnancy bellies, show that human couriers, an old method employed by…

COLOMBIA / 9 MAY 2022

A recent wave of murders in the Ecuadorian province of Esmeraldas provides clues to the role of dissident factions of…

COCAINE / 5 JUL 2022

European-bound Peruvian cocaine is usually moved by foreign gangs. But now homegrown criminals are muscling in on the action.

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Contributes Expertise Across the Board 

22 SEP 2023

This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…