Ervin Mata, the controversial construction businessman accused by SPAK of involvement in international drug trafficking and creating a criminal organization, was arrested four days ago on the island of Ilhabela in Brazil. The arrest was carried out by the Brazilian Federal Police and local forces, and the news was first reported by CNN Brazil.
Mata has been wanted by Albanian justice for years. According to SPAK investigations, he is suspected of involvement in several drug trafficking episodes from Latin America to Europe and Albania. During this time, he was able to evade arrest by living between Latin America, Spain and Brazil.
In Albania, his name became publicly known after the armed clash with Ervis Martinaj in October 2018, in what was called the “block massacre”. The event took place in a bar in the heart of Tirana and shocked public opinion, exposing for the first time the conflict between the two groups. At the time, Mata was also in the spotlight for his relationship with the famous singer Elvana Gjata, who was at the scene of the incident on the night of the clash.
Until that moment, Mata was known in Tirana primarily as a construction businessman involved in tower and residential building projects in the capital. But subsequent investigations by SPAK revealed suspicions of a much darker activity, related to international drug trafficking and the organization of criminal networks.
The place of refuge he had chosen was no ordinary island. Ilhabela, off the coast of São Paulo, is historically known as one of the places where large international drug trafficking networks were established. It was there, in the 1970s, that Tommaso Buschetta, one of the most powerful figures of the Sicilian mafia, also settled.
Buschetta lived on the island for years unnoticed, using the name Tomas Roberto Felice and known to locals as “Toninho.” He ran cocaine and heroin smuggling operations to the United States and Canada, using ships that docked in the port of São Sebastião and planes that landed at night on a small airstrip on the island.
On this same island, decades later, Albanian businessman Ervin Mata was also arrested.
It is not known whether Mata had chosen Ilhabela to live a quiet and luxurious life away from the eyes of justice, or whether he had ended up in a country that has for decades held the history of the largest international drug trafficking networks.
