Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain are the top destinations for drugs shipped from Ecuador

Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain are the main destinations for drugs leaving Ecuador through its ports, according to Interior Minister Juan Zapata and the National Police, which since the beginning of the year has seized 151 tons of illicit substances.

Guayaquil is Ecuador’s largest port.

In a press conference, Zapata reaffirmed that Ecuador is the third country in the world that seizes the most drugs, above other countries with a strong presence of drug trafficking such as Mexico, mostly cocaine. He said that most of the drugs seized, as well as those that escape detection and are shipped overseas, are cocaine that originates in Colombia and Peru.

Of the drugs seized this year in Ecuador there are 135 tons of cocaine hydrochloride, 2.1 tons of cocaine paste, 206 kilos of heroin and 13.5 tons of marijuana.

The director of the Anti-Narcotics Department of the National Police, Pablo Ramírez, commented that, of the 151 tons seized so far in 2023, 78 were moved by land at the time of their seizure and 72 by sea. He acknowledged that the majority of outgoing drug shipments go undetected.

Bananas are Ecuador’s main export product used by drug trafficking mafias to camouflage drug shipments destined for Europe, according to Ramírez.

That is the case of the largest drug cache seized in the history of Spain, when last week 9.5 tons of cocaine were discovered in the port of Algeciras, inside a container with boxes of bananas that came from the port of Machala.

Among the latest seizures made in Ecuador is a shipment of 176 kilos of cocaine found inside the structure of a machine that was going to be sent to Guatemala inside a container from the port of Guayaquil, as reported Wednesday by the Police through their official channels.

According to Ramírez, other Ecuadorian ports used for illegal drug shipments are in Manta and Esmeraldas.