Ecuadorian security forces intercepted two vessels south of San Cristobal Island, in the Galapagos archipelago, and in that operation, police and military seized 77 bags of cocaine, weighing a total of about 2.500 kilograms, as well as 37 fuel drums used for drug smuggling.
Seven people, all Ecuadorian citizens, were arrested on two fishing boats.
A member of the team of international investigators tasked with combating drug trafficking told "Vijesti" that an investigation into the smuggling network is underway.
The smugglers were transporting 37 bags of drugs on one vessel and 40 sacks on the other.
The police there also found a GPS buoy, indicating that the drugs were to be dumped into the sea at a pre-arranged location for collection.
After intercepting the boats, security forces handed over the seized evidence to the authorities.
Yesterday's operation was preceded by the seizure of about two tons of cocaine on a merchant ship more than 80 kilometers from the city of Manta on February 15th.
The drugs were packaged in about 20 large packages, and the cocaine "cubes" were marked with at least four different logos.
This action was carried out after a tip-off about possible contamination of the ship, and the Navy, with the support of the Coast Guard and Marines, intercepted the vessel while it was sailing and conducted a detailed search.
"Yugoslavs" are rampaging through Ecuador
At the end of last year, an operation by the Ecuadorian National Police dismantled a criminal organization responsible for laundering money related to international drug trafficking, whose members originated from the former Yugoslavia.
Then the Serbian drug lord was also handcuffed. To Srdjan Jezdimir, and the interlocutor involved in that investigation said that long before Jezdimir was deprived of his liberty, his contacts and suspicious dealings with several Montenegrin, Serbian and Bosnia and Herzegovina citizens were established, who were mostly recorded as members of organized criminal groups connected to international cocaine smuggling.
The same source then announced that during the investigation, financial transactions with these clan members were also discovered, and that the investigation would lead to them as well.
The citizen of Serbia, originally from Laktaš (BiH), has been in South America for a long time, where he was arrested for drug smuggling.
He is one of dozens of citizens from the former Yugoslavia whose criminal activities in South America were reported by "Vijesti" in early September last year, when their identities were not revealed due to the investigation.
It was then announced that after the nineties and a series of murders attributed to the purges of the then State Security Administration (UDBA), a large number of younger guys from those teams went to the southern hemisphere in order to survive. Like Dobroslav Gavrić who first went to Croatia with a fake passport, then to Italy, and then to Cuba and Ecuador, to arrive in the Republic of South Africa in 2007, dozens of guys went to Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama.
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