Prosecutors launched an operation early Thursday morning with 900 officers stationed simultaneously in five provinces of Ecuador. The result was the arrest of 31 people, judges, prosecutors, secretaries, police officers, prison leaders and lawyers. Attorney General Diana Salazar, who led the investigation from Quito, called the case a metastasis because it shows how drug trafficking has penetrated “the sensitive functions of the judiciary” in the Latin American country.
The public prosecutor's office had 38 names on its arrest list, but seven people managed to escape. The information about the raids was leaked before the operation and published on the X account, formerly Twitter, of former President Rafael Correa. When the prosecutors and agents arrived at the Judicial Council building, the body that administers justice in Ecuador, they were greeted by turning off the elevators. After climbing 14 floors on foot, officers found only cigarette butts and whiskey. The targets of the operation fled to their homes to protect their money, prosecutor Salazar told the judge in a more than six-hour hearing explaining the case.
“The term narcopolitics was highlighted. We can see how criminal structures have penetrated institutions to achieve their goals,” said Prosecutor Salazar. On Wednesday, a day before the operation, the Assembly's oversight commission, made up mostly of supporters of former President Rafael Correa, began procedures for a political trial against Salazar. They accuse her of negligently fulfilling her duties and of being selective in the cases she pursues, for example against the brother-in-law of former President Guillermo Lasso for alleged organized crime.
About thirty detainees are charged with organized crime. Preventive detention has been ordered for 16 people, one is under house arrest. A further 13 defendants are banned from leaving the country. The judge did not grant Prosecutor Salazar a freeze on the accounts and assets of the former justice officials accused of corruption.
This is the most serious blow to the conspiracy that operates in the Ecuadorian justice system. In fact, the operation began on October 3, 2022 with a massacre in Cotopaxi Prison, an hour from Quito, the capital. In this incident, 16 people died and 43 were injured. The aim was to assassinate Leandro Norero, a drug lord who moved among Guayaquil's social elite and financed important criminal gangs for the logistics of the drug trafficking of the Mexican cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación.
Norero had been in prison since May 2022. He was arrested in a money laundering operation. They found $6 million worth of cash, more than $4 million worth of jewelry and dozens of gold bars. Then his role in a criminal structure that used shell companies to launder money was uncovered. His mother, two brothers and his wife were involved in the conspiracy. Sent to Cotopaxi Prison, the capo pulled the strings of the system to free his relatives, obtain the return of confiscated assets and avoid transfer to the maximum security prison in Guayaquil.
Every bank transfer, jewelery delivery, surveillance and murder job was recorded on the mobile phones he used from prison and which are now part of the evidence. The President of the Judiciary, Wilman Terán, is on the list of those involved. He is being investigated for allegedly distributing sentences in favor of Norero's relatives that he imposed when Terán was a judge at the National Court.
Among the detainees is Pablo Ramírez, whom former President Guillermo Lasso promoted to general and entrusted him with tasks such as running the country's prison system. There were four prison massacres under his leadership. One of them was in October 2022 when Norero was murdered. Lasso dismissed Ramírez from office after the massacre. He appointed him head of the police's anti-narcotics department.
Norero thanks Ramírez for the protection inside the prison in the chats today in the hands of the Prosecutor's Office. Other police officers involved leaked information about the planned actions against the drug trafficker, guarded his assets, destroyed and stole evidence and even acted as front men, Salazar explained in the hearing. Norero paid with money and financed the foreign studies of the police officers' children, as well as medical operations for the officers' relatives and cell phones.
The drug trafficking boss would be responsible for at least three homicides. That of the lawyer Harrison Salcedo, defender of the criminal who leads the criminal gang Los Choneros. According to the disclosed conversations, he also ordered the murder of journalist Gerardo Delgado, an execution he had inadvertently requested. The third case is that of Agustín Intriago, mayor of the coastal town of Manta. According to the investigation, this had connections to the Norero money laundering network. The boss also ordered surveillance of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio and outlined a plan to assassinate the prosecutor investigating the money laundering case.
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