Ecuadorian presidential candidate Villavicencio assassinated in brazen public ambush

Los Choneros ' operations span extortion, murder, assassinations, and drug trafficking. The group is said to have strong links to global criminal networks like the Sinaloa cartel, Albanian Mafia, Italian Ndrangheta, and Cosa Nostra. Its web of criminal connections is complex and powerful.

https://www.theweek.in/news/world/2...ssassinated-in-brazen-public-ambush.html

The hit was done by Colombian sicarios on motorbikes one was killed others arrested.

The Los Lobos drug gang is said to have claimed responsibility for the attack. In a video , a group of armed, masked men warned that other politicians should also watch out. They focus in particular on presidential candidate Jan Topic. 'Watch out Jan Topic, you dirty dog. As a presidential candidate, if you don't keep your word, you're next.”

The authenticity of that video was not confirmed by Ecuadorian authorities, and in another video - also unverified - the gang allegedly distanced itself from Villavicencio's murder.

The drug trade is the main cause of the unrest. Ecuador is a new hub in cocaine smuggling. The country trades drugs from neighboring Colombia and Peru to European countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands.'

On Thursday it was announced that customs made the largest drug discovery ever in the Netherlands in July. More than 8,000 kilos of cocaine was illegally transported from Peru via Ecuador to the port of Rotterdam.

Last week it was already known that most coke entering the port of Rotterdam is transported from Ecuador .

The Netherlands is working on a customs agreement with Ecuador to curb the smuggling of drugs.

Jan Topic received military training in the French Foreign Legion and claimed to have fought in Ukraine during the Russian invasion and parts of Africa and Syria. For this fact he has been accused of being a mercenary, however, he claimed to be an "elite professional soldier" and to have fought for France because he had dual Ecuadorian-French nationality, between 2006 and 2012.

Who is the powerful Ecuadorian gang leader 'Fito'?
August 14, 2023

Who is the powerful Ecuadorian gang leader 'Fito'?
He was arrested this weekend for involvement in the assassination of a presidential candidate and taken to a high-security prison accompanied by nearly 4,000 military personnel. Who is 'Fito', the leader of the Ecuadorian criminal gang 'Los Choneros'.



By Joost van der Wegen

Bared
It is a photo of a bare-chested, muscular, overweight man with his arms behind his head, accompanied by heavily armed officers of the Ecuadorian National Police. The bearded man is taken back to the prison where he was until recently, nicknamed 'La Roca', the rock.

He is José Adolfo Macías Villamar, aka Fito, who is considered the most powerful criminal in Ecuador. Fito is the leader of 'Los Choneros', a criminal gang believed to be the armed arm of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel in the country.

punishment
Fito grew up in an Ecuadorian coastal town, which is considered a strategic location for the drug trade. He is serving a sentence of 34 years, of which he has served 12. He was released early in March this year. He was convicted of murder, robbery, illegal possession of weapons and membership of a criminal organization.

His 'Los Choneros' are known as 'hitmen'. They also carried out a bloody battle among themselves in the country's prisons in 2020 after the death of the previous leader. 300 detainees lost their lives. The gang then splintered.

Endangered
Fito is accused of threatening 59-year-old former journalist and politician Fernando Villavicencio with death. He was shot dead last Wednesday after an election rally.

In the weeks before the murder, Villavicencio stated several times that he had been threatened with his life by gang leader Fito, who had made this clear to him through an intermediary. He had to stop to keep talking about the gang. "If I continue… to keep mentioning Los Choneros, they'll destroy me."

Ecuador: councilor kidnapped and shot dead
September 9, 2023

Ecuador: councilor kidnapped and shot dead
A municipal councilor has been shot dead in Ecuador. He was last Thursday and his body was found Friday morning. Bolivar Vera was a member of the city council in Duran, a city directly across the river from the large port city of Guayaquil.

Vera was a member of the centre-right Social Christian Party (PSC). He had been killed with several bullets in the head and chest.

On Thursday afternoon, Vera was traveling in a car with his cousin when they were stopped by armed men. Vera was taken away, his cousin was unharmed.

Guayaquil
The city of Duran is located near the container port of Guayaquil. Organized drug criminals have a lot of influence there. According to the mayor of Duran, 30 violent deaths have been reported since the country's government declared a state of emergency in the area last year.

Vera is the eighth local politician to be shot dead. In August, a municipal official was murdered in Duran.

Fito
Last month a presidential candidate was assassinated. Several suspects are in custody for this. The murder was allegedly carried out by a group of Colombian drug criminals. A court in Ecuador ruled last Friday that there was not enough evidence in that case against detained criminal José Adolfo Macías , known by the alias “Fito” and the leader of the criminal organization Los Choneros. He had been placed in a specially guarded cell for interrogation and for security reasons. The judge has now reversed that.

The second round of the presidential elections will be held in October.

According to InsightCrime, Los Choneros are actually the local armed wing of a Colombian criminal organization. They have connections with the Sinaloa Cartel because they're used to move narcotics from the Colombians to the Mexicans through Ecuador. The reason why Guayaquil is so violent right now is because Los Choneros is at its core not a wealthy professional criminal organization, but more of a lower level street gang which is becoming increasingly fragmented. There are dozens of street gangs operating under the Los Choneros name right now and most of them are fighting each other.

The days of the big cartels is over all these local groups depend on the European crime organizations who bring the stuff in they make the most money not the local groups.

Ecuadorian crime boss Junior Roldan's body is stolen from cemetery crypt in Colombia by rival gangsters to carry out 'satanic ritual', cops claim
Roldán's was laid to rest in the cemetery in Envigado, Colombia in May after he was gunned down in the town of Fredonia
Workers entered the cemetery Wednesday morning to find one of the entrance doors had been left opened and his body missing
Roldán was one of the founding leaders of Los Choneros, the Ecuador-based gang with links to cartels in Colombia and Mexico

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ers-carry-satanic-ritual-cops-claim.html

Six men suspected of involvement in the murder in August of Ecuador's anti-corruption presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio were killed in prison on Friday, the prisons agency said, barely a week before a crucial run-off election.

The killings took place in a penitentiary in Guayaquil, the South American country's largest city, the attorney general's office announced earlier on Friday.

Ecuador's government swiftly condemned the killings.

Outgoing President Guillermo Lasso pledged "neither complicity nor cover-up" in getting to the bottom of the killings, in a post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

"Here the truth will be known," he said.

The SNAI prisons agency said in a statement the six men were all Colombian nationals. It gave no more details of the killings.

The government has said authorities are determined to identify those behind Villavicencio's murder.

Heir to banana trade fortune in Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, wins presidential runoff election
Daniel Noboa, who would run only through May 2025, vowed to rebuild Ecuador following a surge in violence, corruption

https://www.foxnews.com/world/heir-...-noboa-wins-presidential-runoff-election

'Fito', the leader of the Ecuadorian criminal gang 'Los Choneros', has escaped prison.

Manhunt for 'extremely dangerous' Ecuador gang boss vanished from jail
Quito (AFP) – Ecuador has launched a manhunt for an "extremely dangerous" narco leader who has vanished from a maximum security prison in the South American country beset by drug gang violence.

https://www.france24.com/en/live-ne...ous-ecuador-gang-boss-vanished-from-jail

The brutal violence of these days in Ecuador , which included the takeover of a television channel, car bombs and kidnapping of police officers, a crisis that forced Daniel Noboa's government to declare a "state of exception" and curfew , has as its origin the abrupt growth of drug trafficking cartels.

Last August, Ecuador found itself in the crosshairs of the world's main anti-drug agencies when authorities in the Dutch port of Rotterdam discovered almost 9 tons of pure cocaine in a shipment of bananas that came from the South American country.

The enormous amount of drugs transported in a single shipment revealed to investigators that Ecuadorian drug trafficking gangs, in alliance with Mexico's major cartels , were operating on a much larger scale.

In parallel, shipments of narcotics were found in ports in Spain, Germany and Italy.

Port of Rotterdam

Ecuador, police and military against criminal gangs: over 350 arrests
January 12, 2024
(LaPresse) After the chaos that broke out in Ecuador and the state of emergency declared by President Daniel Noboa, the massive police and military operation continues against the narcos, who attempted a coup, also unleashing violence in prisons. In two days, police arrested 358 people, while prison gangs held 178 officials and guards hostage in seven different prisons. Authorities have reported no officers killed in the past four days. The government defined criminal gangs that tried to subvert order in the country as "terrorist organizations". In the capital Quito, the city's police commander said new policies require officers to operate around the clock using multiple strategies to safeguard the community. The police commander of the Guayas department said that the operations led to the capture of people belonging to three of the most dangerous gangs: Los Lobos, Lagartos and Mafia 18. This led to the seizure of drugs, weapons and pamphlets calling for revolt civil against the authorities, as well as threatening the president.

Europe and Switzerland are partly responsible for the chaos in Ecuador
In recent years, Ecuador has become a hub for cocaine trafficking. Some of this cocaine also lands in Switzerland. Because the Swiss are among the largest consumers in Europe.
12.01.2024, 11:59
12.01.2024, 12:40
Revolts in prisons, hostage-taking, state of emergency: the revolt of drug gangs in Ecuador has caused an escalation of violence. The millions of cocaine users in Europe have their share of responsibility: they finance the business of the drug mafia, which is worth billions.

Adolfo Macías, aka “Fito”, the criminal on the run who terrorizes Ecuador
And the Swiss weigh heavily in the balance. Indeed, Zurich, Basel, Geneva and Saint Gall are among the European cities where cocaine is most present, as shown in the report from the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), based on the analysis of waste. Historically, the consumption and availability of cocaine in Europe is very high.

After 2023, 2024 should be another record year
It is almost only in the cities of Belgium and the Netherlands – where cocaine from South America arrives en masse – that more cocaine is consumed than in Switzerland. More precisely, in the ports of Antwerp (Belgium), Rotterdam and Amsterdam (Netherlands). Many deliveries come from Guayaquil, which in recent years has become one of the cocaine transshipment centers. The Ecuadorian city is now in the spotlight, with fights between gangs and the taking of hostages in the television studio.

Violence does not abate in Ecuador, “in a state of war”
And these numbers continue to rise, if we estimate the total amount smuggled from seized cocaine, especially since 2016. This could be due to the peace agreement with the Colombian Farc guerrillas, which disrupted the cocaine market. Production has reached new heights and more and more cocaine, more and more pure, is being shipped to Europe.

While in 2019, 64 tonnes of cocaine were seized in the port of Antwerp, this figure increased to around 90 tonnes in 2021 and 110 tonnes in 2022 – a record. It is likely that a new high will have been reached in 2023. In October alone, investigators seized 23 tonnes of cocaine with a street value of almost 2 billion euros in Antwerp.

“Switzerland consumes a lot of cocaine, from the banker to the worker”
The quantity seized is now so large that Belgian incinerators can no longer cope with the destruction. Customs authorities are sounding the alarm as armed gangs are trying to recover cocaine stored in warehouses. Yet seizures represent only a fraction of the actual quantity: around 10%, according to estimates.

Trial against 129 accused in Brussels
And with cocaine comes violence. Both in the Netherlands and in Belgium, shootings and power struggles between rival gangs are increasing. In early 2023, the eleven-year-old niece of a drug lord was shot dead in Antwerp. In 2021, the famous journalist Peter de Vries was killed in the street in Amsterdam, presumably by the Moroccan Mocro Maffia. Gang violence is also increasing in Brussels, where cocaine is often processed before being distributed across Europe.

Belgium has now placed the fight against cocaine traffickers at the top of its agenda. The problem must also be tackled at Union level, because it concerns all of Europe. The largest criminal trial in the country's history is currently taking place in Brussels with 129 defendants, many of whom are of Albanian nationality. They are accused of having organized a cocaine network on a European scale from Belgium.

Prosecutor who investigated attack on Ecuador TV studio shot dead
January 18, 2024

The prosecutor who investigated the recent attack on a TV station in Ecuador was shot dead in Guayaquil on Wednesday. Public prosecutor César Suárez was shot in his car on his way to court. According to the police, the attack has all the hallmarks of a liquidation.

Suárez was involved in the fight against organized international crime in the province of Guayas, in southwestern Ecuador. He investigated the armed attack on TV station TC Televisión in the port city of Guayaquil. Thirteen hostage takers were arrested on January 9. He also investigated corruption in hospitals, drug trafficking and embezzlement, among other things.

In recent weeks, Ecuador has been in unprecedented chaos due to attacks by criminal organizations. There were riots and hostage taking of 170 people in seven prisons in the country. President Noboa declared a state of emergency. Since then, approximately 40,000 soldiers have been conducting operations and patrolling the streets throughout the country, especially in neighborhoods where drug traffickers are active.

Attorney General Diana Salazar responded to the death of prosecutor César Suárez in a video. “The criminals, the terrorists, will not stop our commitment to Ecuadorian society. We call on the services to guarantee the safety of those who do their work.' She shared no further details about Suárez's death.

Investigation into ex-minister
The Ecuadorian justice department is investigating the murder of the public prosecutor. Primicias writes that José Serrano, a former Minister of the Interior, is a suspect in the case. The Public Prosecution Service has started an investigation into him 'for alleged dissemination of confidential information, because of his “revelations” on sensitive issues.'

Serrano, who was fired in 2018 over a leaked audio scandal against another prosecutor, said in a response to the Public Prosecution Service: "An investigation is urgently needed to determine who leaked the information requested by Prosecutor Suárez to the criminals who ordered to kill him. I will always be willing to cooperate with whatever the law requires of me.”

Ecuador again shocked by carnage
9 mins ago abroad?
QUITO - Ecuador has been shocked by a massacre for the second time in a short time. According to authorities, eight people were killed and eight injured when a group of people came under fire in the port city of Guayaquil.

Police reported that “several armed individuals in a vehicle” began shooting. The eight injured who survived Saturday's attack are under police protection.

The incident follows a murder spree last Friday. Then five holidaymakers were kidnapped and killed in the coastal town of Ayampe, allegedly by criminals who mistook the victims for rival gang members.

Brigitte Garcia
The South American country has been plagued by criminal violence for years and politicians are also not safe. Earlier this month, the body of San Vicente mayor Brigitte Garcia (27) was found shot dead.

President Daniel Noboa declared a state of emergency in January and declared war on gangs. The criminal organizations use Ecuadorian ports to ship drugs to destinations in Europe and the US.