In February 2021, two Balkan drug traffickers exchanged messages on the Skype app in which they boasted that they had the exclusive right to smuggle cocaine in containers from the Ecuadorian company Noboa Trading.
"No one but us can put cocaine into 'Nobo' containers," reads the message from the "skaja" in Croatian prosecutor's files obtained by journalists. KRIK and OCCRPThe message indicates that there were serious connections between drug traffickers and this Ecuadorian company.
"Noboa Trading", however, is no ordinary company. In addition to being the owner of the famous "bonita" banana brand and one of the largest exporters of this fruit from Ecuador, another thing makes it special - it is part of the business empire controlled by the family of Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa.
Although there was talk in Ecuador during the election campaign that cocaine was being smuggled in containers from the company "Noboa", it has not yet been revealed exactly which criminal groups are doing this. A journalistic investigation has determined that these are members of a notorious Balkan crime syndicate.
The Croatian prosecutor's office's files do not specify who the individuals are who are corresponding, only their "Sky" numbers. However, KRIK journalists have discovered in documents from another investigation in Serbia that one of the interlocutors is Nikola Đorđević, an accused in a major case known as the "Balkan Cartel." Đorđević is on the run.
It is not known how Đorđević and his associates secured such a privileged relationship with the company "Noboa Trading", but that this relationship existed is confirmed by other evidence collected by journalists - data on maritime deliveries and exports of goods confirmed that the cocaine deliveries that Đorđević and his associates were corresponding about were hidden in shipments of "Bonita" bananas.
Documents obtained by journalists reveal another thing - associates of drug lord Darko Šarić also participated in this business. The drugs that Đorđević and his team sent in containers from the company "Noboa", when they ended up in Croatia, were taken over by a group led by Šarić's associate Petar Ćosić, known as Šarac. Ćosić is on trial in Croatia for this.
Šarić, who was convicted in Serbia of smuggling around six tons of cocaine, is still on trial for several criminal offenses, including organizing the murders of criminal rivals - the leaders of the Skalja clan - in Greece in 2020, as well as planning the murder of a cooperating witness.
According to the prosecution, he managed his criminal activities from a high-security detention center in Belgrade - thanks to a "Sky" phone he had. He denied this in court.
Šarić's lawyer Dalibor Katancevic tells KRIK and OCCRP that Šarić's cell was searched countless times and the "sky" was never found.
"I am certain that nowhere in the prosecutorial and court documents you refer to is there indisputable evidence that Darko Šarić is connected to any of the people you mention, not to mention the shipments," Katancevic said.
Ćosić's lawyer did not respond to calls from reporters.
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa also did not respond to OCCRP's questions.
Ana Sergi, an expert on organized crime and professor of sociology at the University of Bologna, told OCCRP that the "Sky" conversation points to a clear connection between drug traffickers and employees of a company controlled by the Noboa family.
"[The Sky message] does not in itself prove the involvement of the company's management, but it strongly suggests that someone with control over the container filling process is complicit."
In addition to the connection with the Ecuadorian president's family company, new evidence obtained by journalists also provides insight into previously unknown details about cooperation between various criminal groups that smuggle cocaine into Europe.
The Balkan Cartel
The "Balkan Cartel" is one of the most important trials in Serbia based on evidence from the "Sky" app. The trial indicted members of several criminal groups that collaborated in drug trafficking - including members of the Montenegrin Kavač clan, but also part of the team of Zoran Jakšić, one of the bosses of the famous Amerika group.
It is not clear from the investigation documents to what extent these criminal groups are interconnected, or even which defendants belong to which group, but the prosecution claims that they all participated together in smuggling around seven tons of cocaine into Europe in 2019 and 2020.
Nikola Đorđević, who wrote on Sky about his abusive relationship with the company "Noboa Trading", was indicted in the "Balkan Cartel" case. However, he evaded arrest in 2023 and is being tried in absentia. An international arrest warrant has been issued for him.
The allegations of Đorđević and his associate about a privileged relationship with the family company of the President of Ecuador are confirmed by other evidence collected by journalists.
The smugglers organized three shipments of cocaine to Croatia on the "sky" and exchanged details about them, such as the names of the ships and the dates of their departure, as well as the numbers of the containers in which they packed it. Official data on the sailing, deliveries and exports of goods by the Ecuadorian company Noboa, which the journalists collected, matched the information on the "sky". The journalists thus confirmed that in each of the three cases the smugglers spoke about, the cocaine was hidden in shipments of "Bonita" bananas.
These three shipments over three months, in late 2020 and early 2021, totaled 535 kilograms of cocaine, with a street value of 26 million euros. Police managed to seize a smaller portion – around 60 kilograms.
Documents from the investigation show that all three shipments departed from the Ecuadorian port of Guayaquil on the Liberian-flagged MSC Mirella and were later transferred to other ships.
It happened that the criminal group lost a load of drugs, and in those cases, members of other clans stepped in to "rescue" the cocaine and hand it over to the owners - keeping some for themselves, the papers show.
Šarić's team
Four days after Đorđević and his associate exchanged messages on the "sky" in February 2021, one of the shipments of "Bonita" bananas arrived at the Croatian port of Rijeka. Along with them, the prosecution determined, illegal goods were also hidden in the containers - as much as 430 kilograms of cocaine.
The drugs strayed into this port, according to data from the local prosecutor's office's investigation, and because of that, an underground bid was opened to extract them from the container - as much as half of the illegal cargo was offered for this job.
The document shows that, among others, a team from Croatia led by Petar Ćosić, known as Šarac, was also interested in the "extraction".
As can be seen from the "Sky" messages, he smuggled his own cocaine, but he also "removed" drugs from shipping containers for other groups and charged for this service. However, he gave up on rescuing these 430 kilograms of cocaine, as the drug became known in criminal circles and the job was too risky, according to the prosecution.
This was just one of the cocaine shipments that arrived in Croatia in containers from the family company of the President of Ecuador, and in which Ćosić was interested, according to documents from the investigation.
He also tried to take over the remaining two - weighing 45 and 60 kilograms - but was only partially successful as the larger load was seized by the police. At the time these shipments arrived in Croatia, the company "Noboa Trading" was managed by the president's cousin - Roberto Jorge Ponce Noboa.
Ćosić is accused in Croatia of cocaine smuggling and the murder of Milovan Milovac Cigla's former associate, who was liquidated in Ecuador.
Ćosić's messages from the "sky", which are key evidence in the case against him, reveal that he was receiving orders from a much more powerful person in the underworld - drug lord Darko Šarić, according to an analysis of documents from the investigation in Croatia and the case against Šarić in Serbia.
Šarić, who was convicted by a final verdict of international smuggling of almost six tons of cocaine, is currently on trial in several cases: for money laundering, discrediting and planning the murder of a cooperating witness, and organizing the liquidations of criminal rivals from the Škalja clan.
The prosecution claims that he committed the last acts while in custody. Using several "sky" phones, as the indictment states, Šarić continued to conduct illegal business and issue orders to his associates. He denied this in court.
The smuggling of cocaine in containers from the company "Noboa Trading" in Ecuador has been a topic of public discussion there for some time, but documents from the investigation in Croatia reveal that it was happening to a greater extent than previously known.
Cocaine in bananas
"Investigate Noboa Trading, where drugs are exported in banana boxes from Mr. Daniel Noboa's company to Croatia and Italy," said opposition representative Luisa Gonzalez this year. She spoke several times during the presidential debate about the links between Noboa's company and cocaine smuggling.
Gonzalez reacted after the Colombian magazine Raya reported that police there seized almost 700 kilograms of cocaine from three containers of bananas from the company "Noboa Trading" in the port of Guayaquil between 2020 and 2022.
Although the person Noboa hired to check for drugs on the ship was investigated at least four times, he was never prosecuted.
The president of Noboa emphasized that the company "Noboa Trading" cooperates with the police when cocaine smuggling is detected, but he denied any personal connection to the company's operations.
"I'm not the owner, but my family members are in that company," he said.
However, OCCRP and KRIK journalists, based on documents from the "Pandora Papers" project from 2015, discovered that the president was at one point a co-owner of a company that has a majority stake in Noboa Trading.
Ecuador is, according to the local ombudsman, one of the key exporters of cocaine – as much as 70 percent of the drug consumed in Europe is exported from this country, according to a report by Deutsche Welle.
The main destinations are still ports in Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain, but increased controls there have led smugglers to use smaller ports, where controls are looser – such as those in Croatia.
The Noboa company exported around 160 million euros of fruit to Croatia between 2014 and 2024.
One of the fruit loads containing hidden cocaine ended up in 2021 in the warehouse of the company "Firgo Bonsai", owned by the former mayor of Metković and Croatian politician Katarina Taslak.
"'Frigo Bonsai' and its director Katarina Taslak are in no way connected to the seizure of 73 kilograms of cocaine in the warehouse (...) Its warehouse was misused for criminal purposes," the company's lawyers told the media at the time.
"The more goods you send to that region, the more likely the containers are to be contaminated," Bruce Goldberg, a former DEA agent who worked in Ecuador, told OCCRP.
"And Ecuador sends bananas everywhere."
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