One of the leaders of the Balkan drug cartel, citizen of Lithuania Virginius Labutis, for whom a red warrant was issued, was arrested at El Dorado International Airport in Bogota.
The man identified as responsible for organizing shipments of cocaine from Latin America to the ports of Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Antwerp in Belgium has been detained in an operation by the National Police of Colombia, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and Interpol agents.
He is wanted in more than 195 countries of the world "for crimes related to drug trafficking" and is connected to the dangerous Balkan cartel - said Colonel Gonzalo Cordoba from the Colombian Interpol.
According to official data, Labutis is one of the leaders of the Balkan Cartel cell, which was established in South America.
According to information obtained by Vijesti from a source from the security service, Labutis was in charge of procuring cocaine and organizing shipments of narcotics hidden in containers with fruit, especially bananas.
The drugs he sent mostly to the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp were distributed to other European and Asian countries.
"In the last few months, some of the key people of the Balkan cartel have been arrested in South America. Before Labutis was deprived of his freedom, at the end of September, also at El Dorado International Airport in Bogota, Dajibert Torres Rosario, a key player in the cartel's drug operations, was arrested. For years, he was the main connection for many shipments of cocaine sent by the Balkan Cartel from the port terminals of Guayaquil to the Iberian Peninsula. Torres was wanted by Spanish authorities on suspicion of being the main contact for sending more than 2,5 tons of cocaine, which was shipped from Ecuadorian ports in fruit containers to ports in Spain between 2020 and 2022. A month before that, Admir Tutaj, originally from Albania, also an important link in the drug cartel from the Balkans, was arrested at the Ernesto Cortisoz airport in Barranquilla. "The arrest of Labutis, while he was most likely preparing to ship another large amount of cocaine from Ecuador to Europe, dealt a very significant blow to the criminals from that clan," said an interlocutor to Vijesti from the foreign security service.
He explained that Labutis had a branched network of associates in Latin America, among whom there are several Montenegrins and citizens of the countries of the former Yugoslavia.
The same interlocutor said that the investigative teams managed to discover that the members of that organization, in order to avoid prosecution, communicated about criminal activities through encrypted applications.
"Labutis arrived in Colombia from the Dominican Republic, and he had booked two flights - one to the city of Medellin in Antioquia, and the other to Guayaquil in Ecuador. We believe that these were the bases from which he was supposed to secure at least one more shipment of cocaine. This is shown by intelligence data, which also says that a clan from the Balkans in Colombia maintains ties with dissident groups of former guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and other criminal groups connected to the drug trade. "When it comes to Labutis, he will be deported to his home country, which is also looking for him for drug trafficking," said the interlocutor to Vijesti.
Colonel Gonzalo Cordoba, head of Colombia's Interpol National Central Office, said the operation in which Labutis was arrested was coordinated between Dominican and Colombian authorities, Interpol, the US DEA and the Colombian anti-narcotics police.
"This action weakens the criminal structure of the Balkan cartel to which Labutis belongs," said Kordoba.
Balkans - one of the main cocaine trade in Europe
At the beginning of the new millennium, the Balkan cartel consolidated its position as one of the main actors in the cocaine trade in Europe.
That criminal group, composed mainly of criminals from the former Yugoslavia and the Albanian mafia, in the last decade managed to establish control over approximately half of the cocaine entering the old continent.
According to intelligence data, they have direct connections with cocaine producers in Latin America, and they use strategic ports in Spain, the Netherlands, Italy and Montenegro to smuggle these drugs into Europe...
"In addition to cooperation with local organized criminal groups from Latin America, the Balkan Cartel cooperates in its criminal business with the Dutch, Swedes, Chinese triads, Israelis, Italians... Malten with everyone. This enabled them to establish their cells on both sides of the Atlantic," a source from the foreign security service told Vijesti.
The same interlocutor explained that the roots of the Balkan Cartel go back decades, and that they sometimes relied on the criminal activities of the America clan...
"They used the political and economic instability in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, from which most of them originate, and established a drug trafficking network in Europe, with criminal cells in South America," said the same interlocutor.
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