Ecuador is immersed in a dramatic situation, suffering a series of attacks by drug criminal gangs that unleashed a wave of violence. This Wednesday the anti-mafia prosecutor César Suárez was murderedwhich investigated the takeover of the TC television channel on January 9. A colleague had anticipated it in December: Diana Salazar, the first black woman to head the State Prosecutor’s Office in her country.
She is not a fortune teller, but on December 14, Attorney General Diana Salazar anticipated one of the worst drug attacks in Ecuador. “Let the country be prepared”, he announced after removing the most sensitive fibers of the mafias and their tentacles in power. The investigation had just been revealed Metastasis, described as the cornerstone of “narcopolitics” in Ecuador. There is a “deep structural decomposition that is rampant in the country (…) A system consumed by the cancer of corruption“he explained.
Judges, politicians, prosecutors, police officers, a former director of the penitentiary authority and many other members of high levels of power were accused of benefiting criminal organizations in exchange for money, gold, sexual favors, apartments and luxuries. With an iron fist, the first black woman to become the head of the Prosecutor’s Office unraveled the plot after scrutinizing thousands of chats and call records from the phone of a feared boss murdered in prison in October 2022 in a mutiny.
They killed the Ecuadorian prosecutor who was investigating the armed attack on a television channel
“With certainty, the response to this operation will be an escalation of violence,” Salazar had anticipated.
Since then, in few public appearances Salazar wears a bulletproof vest and is protected by a robust security scheme: “Now, come and kill me”, he said defiantly during a hearing, when he requested the imprisonment of eight new suspects. During her career, he reported racism and death threats against her and her daughter. On this occasion, she pointed out that the criminal structure responsible for the murder of former presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio would also seek to end his life.
“With certainty, the response to this operation will be an escalation of violence”, the 42-year-old woman had anticipated without hesitation, on December 14. On January 7, the prediction came true. Over the course of a week, drug traffickers put the Ecuadorian State in check with hundreds of hostages in prisons, attacks with explosives, armed attacks on the press and shootings, in a wave of violence that left around twenty dead. President Daniel Noboa last week declared a state of emergency and internal armed conflict.
When the situation seemed under control, anti-mafia prosecutor César Suárez, who was investigating the spectacular takeover in the middle of the broadcast perpetrated by armed men on the television channel TC On January 9, he was murdered this Wednesday in Guayaquil. “In light of the murder of our colleague César Suárez, I am going to be emphatic: organized crime groups, criminals, terrorists will not stop our commitment to Ecuadorian society.“said Salazar on X (formerly Twitter).
Javier Milei in Davos: what the world‘s media said about his speech at the World Economic Forum
Diana Salazar, the prosecutor who prosecuted former president Rafael Correa
Salazar was born in June 1981 in Ibarra, in the northern Andes and known as the White City, with about 160,000 inhabitants. According to what he told local media, his psychologist mother raised four children alone. She studied Political Science, He has a doctorate in Jurisprudence, a master’s degree in Procedural Law and is a specialist in Economic Criminal Law and Human Rights.. It is also currently part of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
In 2011 he became a local prosecutor and He became attorney general of the State in 2019. A year later, he prosecuted the popular former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) for corruption and recommended the maximum sentence of eight years. Convicted and in exile in Belgium, he disqualifies her from time to time: “Diana Salazar is so clumsy that she shows it herself,” the former president wrote on the X network on January 8. “My scale of values does not include contacting, threatening, or talking to convicted persons or fugitives from justice,” the prosecutor replied.
Salazar had just called Correa’s then vice president, Jorge Glasto deliver his version in an investigation for embezzlement in public works contracted after an earthquake in 2016. Glas then took refuge in the Mexican embassy in Quito and Justice ordered his preventive detention, at the request of the prosecutor. Salazar’s detractors criticize him for attacking Correa and not advancing other relevant investigations.
The United States recognized Salazar as an “anti-corruption champion”
Anti-corruption heroine or ally of North American interests?
Elected for a period of six years and through meritorious competition, Salazar amasses emblematic cases of corruption. Among her most notable investigations is the so-called FIFA Gatewhich ended with the 10-year prison sentence of the former president of the Ecuadorian Football Federation, Luis Chiriboga Acosta, for money laundering. He also had his eye on the Brazilian firm Odebrecht’s bribery scheme, in which Glas was sentenced to six years in prison in 2017.
Salazar has been called the Ecuadorian Loretta Lynch, due to her similarity to the attorney general of the United States who also uncovered nests of corruption and was the first black woman to assume that position in her country. In 2021 The United States Department of State recognized Salazar as an “anti-corruption champion” for being an example “of heroin to judges, lawyers and prosecutors throughout South America.”. Among the tributes he has received, it is also notable that in 2021, in tribute to his management, an Ecuadorian orchid was named after him.
Although she is criticized for her close proximity to the Americans, Ecuador’s first female prosecutor, Mariana Yépez (1999-2005), believes that many of the complaints have to do with machismo. “He would describe her as a woman with courage, talent and determination,” she told the AFP Gustavo Medina, former attorney, an organization that acts as a lawyer for the State.
ML / ds