An encrypted chat between alleged Balkan drug traffickers in February 2021 reveals them bragging about having exclusive rights to smuggle cocaine alongside bananas in shipping containers exported by the Ecuadorian president’s family firm.
A confidential Croatian prosecution document shows two people, using the encrypted messenger platform Sky ECC and identified only by anonymous PINs, boasting that “no one but them” was allowed to load cocaine in containers shipped by the Noboa Trading Co TCN S.A.
Noboa Trading is part of Noboa Corporation, a sprawling business empire that produces bananas under the Bonita brand and is run by the family of Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa. Noboa Trading Co. did not respond to questions from reporters, and the office of President Noboa declined to comment.
An excerpt from the encrypted Sky ECC chat quoted by Croatian prosecutors, in which two drug traffickers boast that “no one but them” is allowed to load cocaine in containers shipped by Noboa Trading Co.
While the Croatian documents showed only anonymous PINs, a Serbian indictment exclusively obtained by KRIK allowed reporters to identify one of the interlocutors as Nikola Đorđević, an alleged organized crime figure currently wanted by police in Serbia in an unrelated cocaine smuggling case.
Although it’s unclear exactly how Đorđević and his associates would have accessed the containers of a major fruit exporter, there is evidence that their claim wasn’t just an empty boast.
In their encrypted chats, the alleged traffickers referred to three specific shipments of cocaine they were expecting by date, ship name, and container number. Reporters matched the details shared in their discussions to real Noboa Trading banana shipments using shipping records and export data.
For example, they mentioned a massive 430-kilogram load of cocaine hidden in container MEDU9747725, which they said left Ecuador on January 25. By consulting shipping logs and export data, reporters confirmed that Noboa Trading had indeed shipped that exact container, on that exact date.
All three of the shipments, which were examined in detail by reporters from KRIK, OCCRP and the Investigative Journalism Bureau, were sent from Ecuador’s Guayaquil port aboard the Liberian-flagged container ship MSC Mirella in late 2020 and early 2021, before being transferred to other ships.
In total, they contained 535 kg of cocaine with a street value of at least 26 million euros. The last of the shipments, containing 60 kg. of cocaine, was seized by Croatian authorities in early March, after being offloaded in Ploče, a port on the Adriatic Sea, according to the Croatian prosecution document.
Croatian authorities seized over half a ton of cocaine at the Port of Ploče in Croatia in 2021.
While Đorđević’s group dealt with loading the cocaine at the source, Croatian prosecution files reveal that a different Balkan drug gang took responsibility for offloading the drugs from the Noboa Trading containers once they arrived in Croatia.
That group was allegedly led by Petar Ćosić, who is currently on trial in Croatia for organising and leading a criminal organisation, aggravated murder, and smuggling hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Ecuador, including some inside Noboa banana containers. (Ćosić did not respond to a request for comment sent to his lawyer.)
The new evidence provides rare and intimate details of the growing collaboration between criminal groups trafficking cocaine to Europe, and demonstrates how easily supply chains for everyday goods can be compromised.
The cooperation appears to be part of a wider trend towards modular criminal supply chains, according to Anna Sergi, an organised crime expert and professor of sociology at the University of Bologna.
“Groups specialise in origin stuffing, maritime logistics, and local distribution and then sell or barter those capabilities,” Sergi told OCCRP.
