Prosecutors in Ecuador have secured an unprecedented string of convictions in a series of high-profile corruption cases that have rocked the country’s elites, but upcoming political shake ups raise doubts about the sustainability of these efforts.
On March 3, Ecuador’s National Court of Justice (Corte Nacional de Justicia – CNJ) sentenced 10 people for criminal conspiracy in a case prosecutors dubbed “Purga” (Purge). Headlining the group was former national assemblyman Pablo Muentes, who received a 13-year sentence. He was joined by five judges of the Provincial Court of Guayas (Corte Provincial de Guayas), the province home to Ecuador’s largest city and port hub, Guayaquil.
“It is time for all state officials to understand that acts of public corruption … destroy the constitutional state and violate the rights of all Ecuadorians,” acting-Attorney General Wilson Toainga said in his closing statements.
SEE ALSO: Judges and Officials Fall as Ecuador Cleans House
Muentes secured promotions and granted personal favors for judges, according to prosecutors. In return, they ruled in Muentes’ favor in a case involving his unpaid loan with Ecuador’s Pacific Bank (Banco del Pacífico). Prosecutors found that Muentes had submitted false records proving his supposed payment of the loan while arguing that the bank had violated his constitutional rights by labelling him a debtor. In response, corrupt judges in Muentes’ pocket cancelled the debt and ordered the bank to pay the former assemblyman nearly $4 million.
The CNJ, however, rejected additional evidence linking Muentes’ network to a much wider range of crimes, including land trafficking and a bribery case involving Ecuador’s most-wanted criminal, José Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias “Fito,” the leader of the Choneros criminal organization.
The verdict against Muentes’ network follows convictions in the Metastasis corruption case, one of the most consequential in Ecuador’s history. In November 2024, the CNJ sentenced a group of 20 public officials, lawyers, and security forces for collaborating with one of Ecuador’s most powerful drug traffickers, Leandro Norero, who was killed in prison in 2022. Norero used connections in Ecuador’s judiciary, prison authorities, and police to secure early releases from prison for his family members and special privileges behind bars, and to obtain information about upcoming law enforcement operations.
Metastasis and Purga, along with other cases initiated by prosecutors, have exposed how high-level corruption has facilitated Ecuador’s alarming security downturn and the rise of organized crime groups. Other investigations have exposed judicial schemes to secure the release of gang members from prison, the links between Albanian drug traffickers and the highest echelons of Ecuadorian politics, and efforts by a Colombian drug trafficking group called the Border Command to free members captured in Ecuador.
InSight Crime Analysis
This latest round of convictions is the result of a historic anti-corruption push initiated by Ecuador’s Attorney General’s Office. But this campaign could now be threatened by political maneuvering over the appointment of the country’s top prosecutor and heightened polarization in the lead up to the presidential election in April.
Ecuador’s progress against the deeply-entrenched interests at the nexus of politics and organized crime comes at a moment of transition. In the coming months, the country will select a replacement for Attorney General Diana Salazar, a driving force behind Metastasis, Purga, and a number of other corruption cases.
“The position of Attorney General in Ecuador is perhaps the most powerful position in the country,” Pablo Punín, an Ecuadorian constitutional and criminal justice expert, told InSight Crime. “It’s used to persecute political enemies and especially to bring down those who do not like you. Those who have power will always seek [to control it].”
SEE ALSO: Metastasis Case Exposes Ecuador’s Corruption Cancer
The popularly-elected but controversial body in charge of selecting the Attorney General and a number of other top-level judicial and electoral officials is the Council for Citizen Participation and Social Control (Consejo de Participación Ciudadana y Control Social – CPCCS). The council has been widely criticized for wielding outsized power over key positions, as well as political influence within its ranks.
“[The CPCCS] makes it so high stakes. Whoever controls it can lop off the heads of every other institution,” Will Freeman, a fellow of Latin American Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told InSight Crime. “It’ll be highly politicized as long as it exists.”
What’s more, on April 13, the country will select a new president, choosing between sitting President Daniel Noboa and Luisa González, the mentee of former President Rafael Correa. The highly-polarized atmosphere of the election campaign further risks politicizing the Attorney General’s Office, inhibiting its anti-corruption drive. Correa, in particular, has constantly accused Salazar of unfairly targeting his allies – allegations Salazar has denied.
Featured image: Attorney General Diana Salazar discusses the Purge Case (Photo: Attorney General’s Office)