Here is the scene: a confidential prosecution document from Croatia shows two people boasting in a private, encrypted chat that “no one but them” is allowed to load cocaine into fruit containers shipped by one specific company.
No matter who owned the company, that detail would be intriguing. But the stakes, and the public interest, are much higher when the firm is Noboa Trading Co., a major fruit exporter owned by the family of Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa.
In recent days the IJB, with partners at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and Serbia’s KRIK, detailed links between alleged Balkan drug traffickers — a number of whom had communicated on an encrypted message service Sky ECC — and shipping containers exported to Europe by Noboa Trading Co.
The revelations do not indicate criminality on the part of the firm, but come at an awkward time for President Noboa, who has pitched himself as an anti-cartel crusader. Noboa Trading Co. did not respond to questions from reporters, and the office of President Noboa declined to comment.
In March 2025, revelations emerged in Colombian media in regard to fruit shipments linked to Noboa Trading Co. that had been seized before leaving Ecuador, with cocaine allegedly on board. We wondered, given the crucial role played by cocaine exports from Ecuador in the global cocaine trade, if there was something that we could do to add to that picture.
Our first key finding was that confidential Croatian prosecution document, which showed alleged narco-traffickers who appeared to be discussing various Noboa Trading Co. shipments in their secret chats. They also seemed to be indicating that they, alone, had some sort of monopoly over the Noboa containers arriving from Ecuador into the Balkans.
We then had a two-pronged challenge.
Firstly, the job was to actually map the shipments that the alleged traffickers were talking about, to real-life events. This we were able to do by matching import, export and shipping data to the shipments referred to in the chats, which came with dates, ship names and container numbers.
This triangulation, expertly led by researchers at KRIK and OCCRP, let us know we weren’t just reading these narco chats in isolation. The shipments had actually happened.
Secondly, we wanted to find out just who was behind the chats, because the Croatian prosecution documents named some people, but in other instances they used only anonymous Sky ECC message service pins.
When KRIK in Serbia cross-referenced the Croatian case with a separate indictment from their country, they could see that one of the PINs being referred to in Croatia – F0804D – was also mentioned in a case in Serbia. This time, however, the name behind that pin was revealed: a fugitive alleged drug trafficker named Nikola Đorđević. We then used similar cross-referencing to identify the Montenegrin drug lord Darko Šarić.
This series of triangulations were the eureka moments for the investigation, as they marked the first time that any Noboa containers had ever been linked to a known alleged criminal grouping. They never would have been possible without our partners in Serbia and their knowledge of the messenger system and how it all worked.
The story has gained a lot of attention in Latin America because drugs being moved in Noboa Trading Co. containers is something President Noboa has had to previously defend. The fact that a president who is running on a “tough on organized crime” stance can see his family company in such proximity to cocaine shipments has raised questions.
The story shows the benefits of the collaborative, cross-border journalism model. It involved reporters and researchers in a number of countries coming together to get to the bottom of a story that just began with one hit — a prosecution file that mentioned this particular company.
It shows the value of partnerships, good team work, persistence and lasting camaraderie. At times we came under pressure with deadlines and other matters, but our experience of having worked together on numerous other projects helped see it over the line.
Brian Fitzpatrick is a senior editor at the IJB. Previously he was a senior investigative reporter and core editor at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a global investigative reporting non-profit. Collaborative projects he worked on at OCCRP included The Steward Files (2025); the Narco Files (2023); Suisse Secrets (2022); the Russian Asset Tracker (2022), which won the European Press Prize for Innovation; and the Pandora Papers (2021), led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Previously deputy news editor at the National Post, he has also frequently reported from Latin America, covering criminal groups and the drug wars. He holds degrees from King’s College London, the University of Galway, and Technological University Dublin. bfitzpatrick@ijbureau.org
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