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As if gang violence wasn’t enough – the last to pay the price were the six alleged Colombian hitmen of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, killed in the prisons where they had been held after the murder on August 9th – here Ecuador must deal with increasingly pervasive recycling. A chain facilitated by a judicial system lacking in rules and by the banking/financial system permeable to the point that the international financial task force (Fatf) included the country in the black list in January 2023.
There is certainly no shortage of hot fronts for the president who will emerge from the run-off on Sunday 15 October between the candidates Luisa González (45-year-old lawyer from the Movimiento revolucion ciudadana) and Daniel Noboa (35-year-old entrepreneur in the banana sector, from the Accion Democratic Nacional coalition).
DIRTY BUSINESS
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Wide-ranging recycling
The Ecuadorian Observatory of Organized Crime (Oeco) has just published research which confirms drug trafficking as the prevalent activity of gangs (which have grown exponentially in the prison circuit) but underlines that money laundering is the second most common crime in the six states taken into consideration exam: Carchi, El Oro, Guayas, Manabí, Santa Elena and Sucumbíos. According to the study – which is based on field work and interviews with 116 state security officials – money laundering is concentrated mainly in construction, real estate, online gambling and the opening of car dealerships. used cars.
The explosion of the drug trade has led to a significant increase in capital flows, which have contributed to strengthening local criminal organizations and – as a further consequence – to an increase in violence, with an increase in murders by 82% in 2022 compared to the previous year. The enormous mass of illicit capital has increased the need for local criminal groups to launder the proceeds. The recent estimate from the Centro Estratégico Latinoamericano de Geopolítica (Celag) states that in 2021 approximately 3.5 billion dollars were laundered through the Ecuadorian financial system, almost triple the 1.2 billion moved annually between 2007 and 2016.
Billionaire drug trafficking
Most drug trafficking gangs turn to foreign criminal organizations, which are much more expert in the “art” of money laundering. Starting from the Colombian and Brazilian ones.