The world has been watching the situation in Ecuador in disbelief for the past few days. In the country located between Colombia and Peru - the leading producers of cocaine - presidential candidates wear bulletproof vests during the campaign, and a few months ago one was killed by clans in front of citizens.
Now, videos of drug cartel leaders escaping from prison, taking prison guards hostage, shooting and kidnapping citizens, shooting into universities, then with hecklers and bombs on television in the city of Guayaquil and holding journalists and cameramen hostage for hours while live on the road have gone around the world. camera, from the studio, address the nation: "Don't you dare to play with the mafia".
photo: ap...ARRESTED CRIMINALS:...
Many in Serbia thought that such a thing was not possible in our country. Not that it's possible... It was. Maybe fewer shots were fired, but more blood was spilled, and the consequences are still being felt. Serbia is the country where the Zemun clan killed Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić in 2003, at the very moment when the cooperating witness decided to speak for the then newly formed Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime, which had the task of breaking up the criminal drug death squads whose actual commanders were secret services and special police units. After the assassination of the prime minister, a state of emergency was declared and the action "Saber" was launched. Suddenly, the state realized, at least for a short time, that it could be stronger than the mafia, even though it had retreated 13 years earlier, and missed the opportunity for reckoning during the democratic revolution known as October 5, 2000.
A similar prelude to current events preceded it in Ecuador. Namely, the prosecutor Diana Salazar launched the "Metastasis" operation in December 2023 and decided to deal with what she calls "drug politics".
OPERATION "METASTASES"
What was long suspected but not obvious has been revealed. And then the criminals decided to make terror official. After all, the Prosecutor's Office continues to drain all the pus that has infected the republic. The war is about a trilogy of terror: drug traffickers, their accomplices, bad court officials and co-authors, connected politicians. Operation "Metastasis" holds the keys that opened Pandora's box. Let's start in order:
- drug dealers, bribery and corruption actually took over power in Ecuador a decade or more ago which was not immediately visible, even four years ago, according to statistical data, that country was considered one of the safest in that part of the world;
- they formed gangs, actually paramilitaries;
- the tentacles of the mafia penetrated the police, the army, and the judiciary with the help of bribery and corruption;
- criminals long ago took control of all prisons that were centers of crime and paid judges to release them when they wanted;
- the mafia has allies in politics who defend them and work hand in hand.
CHRONOLOGY OF THE BATTLE
Allegations of corruption in the Ecuadorian judiciary are nothing new. In 2022, 24 judges and 30 prosecutors were under investigation for corruption and links to drug trafficking.
But this latest investigation, as of December 2023, was launched after the October 2022 murder of Leandro Norero, one of Ecuador's leading drug traffickers. mobile phone, according to legal documents accessed by the Ecuadorian newspaper "Hora".
Norero was a very influential criminal figure, founding the Chone Killers, one of Ecuador's main gangs, and allegedly helping broker the cocaine trade with the Mexican Jalisco Cartel Nueva Generacion (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion - CJNG). He was shot and killed in prison in October 2022, becoming another high-profile victim of Ecuador's gang war.
On December 6, 2023, President Noboa, who took office in November, threatened to name and shame judges and prosecutors who let criminals walk free. Already on December 14, hundreds of prosecutors and police raided the offices of Ecuador's Judicial Council, which regulates the country's courts and judges, as well as the homes of several dozen judges, police commanders and other officials. The highest-ranking officials arrested were the president of the Judicial Council, Vilman Teran, the former director of national prisons, Pablo Ramírez, and ten active and former judges in eight provinces.
photo: ap...Prosecutor Diana Salazar, who is dealing with the mafia
"Narcotics has been discovered in Ecuador," state prosecutor Diana Salazar stated in a statement published on social networks. A wide-ranging investigation into ties between security and justice officials and Ecuadorian gangs revealed that criminal leaders paid off corrupt officials overseeing their cases in order to obtain favorable verdicts, Salazar found.
Judge Teran published a video of his arrest and commented that the move was "illegal and arbitrary". The Judicial Council he presided over also strongly protested Teran's arrest, describing it as a smear campaign.
The arrest of more than two dozen judges and top security personnel in Ecuador on December 15, 2023, could reveal major corrupt links between officials and organized crime in the country and serve as a necessary victory for new President Daniel Noboa, 35. And already on January 3, the chief prosecutor of Ecuador, Diana Salazar, informed the public that the drug cartels ordered and prepared her murder.
photo: apPRISONS UNDER POLICE CONTROL: After defeating the rebels
On Sunday, January 7, it was established that two leaders of two drug gangs had escaped from prison. A state of emergency was declared, and a day later criminals took dozens of prison guards hostage and took control of the prisons. As early as January 9, criminals began to conquer the streets of the city of Guayaquil. And then the youngest president in the history of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, realizes that the entire country is on the edge of the abyss, and that he must start a life-and-death struggle.
"I have signed an executive decree declaring an internal armed conflict and have identified the following transnational organized crime groups as terrorist organizations and belligerent non-state actors: Aguilas, AguilasKiller, Ak47, Caballeros Oscuros, ChoneKiller, Choneros, Cuar Covichenos, Feeros, Fatales, Gangster, Cutter Pilar, Lagartos, Latin Kings, Lobos, Los p.27, Los Tiburones, Mafia 18, Mafia Trebol, Patrones, R7, Tiguerones… I have ordered the armed forces to carry out military operations to neutralize these groups.”
And so together brave politicians with honorable prosecutors, police officers and the army set out to conquer street by street, meter by meter, but also institution by institution in their own country in order to defeat the mafia. Recall that Ecuador, which in 2019 was one of the safest countries in the region with a murder rate of 6,7 murders per 100.000 inhabitants, has now become one of the deadliest Latin American countries, and the murder rate has increased sixfold in just four years. During the same period, Ecuador became one of the most important transit countries for cocaine.
Balkan drug cartels in Ecuador and the story of a spirit that can vote
For a decade and a half, Saric's clan as well as Albanian drug gangs have been stationed precisely in Guayaquil - the port city of Ecuador, from where ships full of cocaine sail to European ports every day.
The most striking example of this is the life and death of Milan Milovac. For eleven years he managed to live in Ecuador unnoticed like a ghost. But from November 13, 2020 to January 12, 2021, Milovac walked like a death row inmate. According to the criminal complaint, he was put on the kill list by the clan of which he was a member - Darko Šarić's clan. He was sentenced to eleven years on drug charges, but escaped prison in Serbia. Although Interpol was on his trail, Milovac landed in Guayaquil after 2009.
The Ecuadorian Constitution adopted in 2008 created the status of "universal citizenship" accepting all without exception; visas were abolished as a requirement for entry into the country, and in 2012 Ecuador's civil police took over migration control at airports. Security was not a priority, nor was the use of technology to prevent visitors with criminal records from arriving.
Milovac took advantage of this benevolent atmosphere towards foreign visitors. He was given a false identity as a citizen of Ecuador with the name Marko Patricio Marković Gomez. He was allegedly a local representative of the Serbian cocaine cartel led by Darko Saric - according to official investigations in Eastern Europe. Milovac had experience in dealing with Colombian providers as he worked for the Italian criminal organization 'Ndrangeta. That's why he spoke Spanish. In Guayaquil, he was in charge of dealings with a Colombian supplier, probably based in the Andean city of Pasto. Then there was a transfer to a new "duty" - sending drugs through the port of Guayaquil in containers with fresh food for export. Reports indicate that at the beginning of 2020, Sarić was informed by his close associate Petar Ćosić that Milovac had started working independently. Šarić understood this as Milovč's betrayal and ordered the "ghost from Ecuador" to be killed. First, he was wounded, and then, after a long hospital recovery, he died, under mysterious circumstances, a few hours after being brought to the villa he rented.
Milovac lived under a false identity in Ecuador. This fact was noticed by the Ecuadorian authorities only after his death when his family in Eastern Europe sent a copy of his passport showing his real name and nationality - Milan Milovac, of Croatian nationality. Nevertheless, he was allowed to vote in the elections held in Ecuador in February 2023. The paradox is enormous. Milovac, an alleged drug trafficker who died two years ago, can still vote in the town of Empalme, in the province of Guayas, in booth number 42 in a school. This territory is a hotspot for gangs linked to Mexican and Balkan cartels. The whole case shows that in Ecuador even ghosts vote in elections and have political rights.
JZ
