2023-08-11 07:01:00
Whoever ordered the death of Fernando Villavicencio Valencia not only peppered Ecuador’s presidential elections with horror. He also silenced a man who had been making serious complaints against members of his nation’s political class for several years, whom he related to corruption and drug trafficking mafias.
“If you think about who Fernando’s death could have been good for, you lose yourself in an immense tide, because it can be good for everyone, and it can also harm everyone,” said his friend and colleague Martín Pallares, a columnist for the newspaper. Ecuadorian newspaper Expreso.
He was referring to the fact that the late journalist, former assemblyman and presidential candidate had dedicated his life to uncovering rotten pots that affected great powers.
Villavicencio provided evidence of bribery and illegal financing by the Odebrecht company in his country, which led to sentences against former President Rafael Correa (asylee in Belgium) and his Vice President Jorge Glas.
Against correísmo, in particular, he made multiple complaints, linking its militants to dark corruption schemes. The last one he focused on was Raisa Vulgarín, a candidate for the Ecuadorian Assembly (Congress) for the Revolución Ciudadana party, whose leader is former president Correa.
She is a partner of the accountant Camilo Burgos, cousin of Nicolás Petro (the son of President Gustavo Petro), who is being prosecuted for his alleged participation in acts of corruption, money laundering and illicit enrichment during his father’s presidential campaign. Cases that have nothing to do with corruption in Ecuador.
In the evidence revealed by the Prosecutor’s Office in the guarantee control hearings, there were WhatsApp chats in which Daysuris Vásquez, the ex-wife of Nicolás Petro and an alleged accomplice in his crimes, mentioned that -allegedly- Raisa and Camilo participated in the movement of hot money.
One of the exposed conversations about the management of silver, between Nicolás and Daysuris, details: “50 Camilo, 50 Raisa, 50 Germán, 50 Melissa.”
Upon learning of this situation, on July 29, Fernando Villavicencio spoke on Twitter: “In several photos revealed in Colombia, the candidate for the National Assembly Raisa Vulgarín appears together with Nicolás Petro, Day Vásquez and Camilo Burgos. In the chats revealed by the Prosecutor’s Office, it is indicated that part of the money would have been mobilized from Barranquilla to Bogotá using two people. Camilo and Raisa are mentioned”.
And he concluded: “This is a very serious case, even more so considering that the person who directed Gustavo Petro’s electoral campaign was the sentenced and fugitive from justice Vinicio Alvarado Espinel, who also directs the campaigns of Luisa González and Andrés Arauz in Ecuador,” al time that he asked the Prosecutor’s Office of his country to request that evidence from his Colombian counterpart.
Faced with these questions, Raisa Vulgarín published a statement, stating that she has nothing to hide. “My sentimental relationship is of a personal, intimate, private nature and has nothing to do with the political movement I represent (…). I am at your complete disposal to answer any of the questions that the relevant authorities request and thus clear up any misunderstanding,” she said.
After learning of the assassination, Rafael Correa wrote: “Ecuador has become a failed state. You hurt homeland. My solidarity with his family and with all the families of the victims of violence. Those who intend to sow even more hatred with this new tragedy, I hope they understand that it only continues to destroy us.
The truth is that now Ecuadorian public opinion is pointing to that movement. In the words of Pallares, “I don’t think that correísmo has ordered him to be killed, but today they are seen as the villains. They hated Villavicencio with all their souls.”
The rivalry with Piedad Córdoba
In January 2022, when he was an assembly member, Villavicencio traveled to Colombia to meet with President Iván Duque. He handed him a 125-page report prepared by the Legislative Oversight Commission, with details of the tentacles in South America of Alex Saab, the alleged front man for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
In the document, which he also gave copies to the US Department of Justice and the Panamanian Prosecutor’s Office, today’s senator Piedad Córdoba and a Bogota construction company (Global Construction Fund) were mentioned as alleged accomplices in the network.
“That company, which also operated from Ecuador, did not export a single house to Venezuela. It was a front company. The objective of Alex Saab and Álvaro Pulido (his partner), and the objective of Chavismo, was to appropriate the freely available reserves of the Ecuadorian State. Ecuador was the victim of the assault on the reserves, because it is the only country that has dollars (…). This allowed a drain of 2,697 million dollars, which put the economy of my country at risk,” stressed Villavicencio.
Piedad Córdoba denied her participation in these events and insisted that she had no connections with Saab. He insulted the Ecuadorian in an interview with Semana, accused him of making a film to defame her and warned that he was going to denounce him.
“That Villavicencio guy who has his ears, because he nailed it to me, he nailed it to me. I am going to denounce and I take whoever it is ahead of me, I go with everything ”, declared Córdoba.
Given this, the assemblyman responded on Twitter: “Madam @piedadcordoba, your primary level of violence expresses your despair at feeling discovered. The information delivered to the court derails her lie that she did not know Álex Saab. You traveled to Ecuador in July 2013, with your son and Alex Saab, on a Saab plane”, and published a flight manifest.
“He had incredible information that not even the intelligence services handled. He had documents and a keen nose, he was a source that all of us journalists reached out to, ”Pallares recalled.
Nobody knows very well what Villavicencio’s sources were, but he had an investigative background that covered a large part of South America, and these cases far from his country are not associated by the Ecuadorian justice system with his murder. The Colombian Foreign Ministry expressed its condolences on social networks: “Minister Álvaro Leyva, and the entire Government, reaffirm their solidarity with the Ecuadorian people and trust in the strength of the institutions of the sister Republic of Ecuador to clarify the facts and punish the responsible”.
Colombians involved
President Guillermo Lasso described what happened as “a political crime”, declared a State of Exception for 60 days and asked the FBI for investigative support.
The murder was perpetrated at 6:14 pm last Wednesday, after a proselytizing event at an educational institution in Quito.
The Police assured that Villavicencio had three security rings; However, the hitmen’s motorcycle easily approached the unarmored truck that was going to transport him, and when he got on the back seat, they shot him through the window.
Then a shootout broke out with the escort, in which three policemen were injured and the alleged murderer, who was captured.
At this point, an irregularity in the procedure must be highlighted: instead of taking the murder suspect to a hospital to have his injuries treated, the uniformed officers transferred him to a headquarters of the Prosecutor’s Office (Flagrancia Unit), where they later reported his death due to serious injuries, the deceased turned out to be Colombian.
The Police carried out several raids in two semi-rural areas of Quito, called Conocoto and San Bartolo, where they captured another six Colombians who apparently were involved in the assassination. They seized an arsenal of firearms and grenades.
Their names later circulated in the press: Adey Fernando García García, sentenced to 10 years for homicide and drug trafficking; Jules Osmín Castaño Alzate, who served four years in prison for possession of drugs; Andrés Manuel Mosquera Ortiz, Jhon Gregore Rodríguez, José Neider López Hitas and Camilo Andrés Romero Reyes.
The first two also had pending arrest warrants for the crime of reception.
The Minister of the Interior, Juan Zapata, stated that they belonged to an organized crime group, although he did not specify which one. In Ecuador there are dangerous local gangs that dispute the territory for drug trafficking, illegal mining, extortion and other crimes; some of them work for cartels in Mexico and in the European region of the Balkans.
Villavicencio had already denounced threats against him. In September 2022, a couple of hitmen shot at the facade of his house. At that time, the suspect of orchestrating the attack was José Adolfo Macías Villamar (“Fito”), one of the imprisoned leaders of “los Choneros”, a gang that works in association with foreign cartels.
After the murder, a video circulated through networks in which supposedly “Los Lobos”, an enemy faction of “Los Choneros”, claimed responsibility for the act; however, it turned out to be a setup.
Villavicencio used to say that “Ecuador is a country that is kidnapped by cocaine mafias, illegal mining and corruption.” He promised that, if he came to power, he would build a mega-prison in the Amazon to imprison all the big shots and he would do an unprecedented purge of the Public Force, to eliminate his ties to organized crime.
Some of all these adversaries ordered to annihilate him 11 days before the elections. Although the polls did not show him as a favorite over the other seven candidates, his death sends a disastrous message for Ecuadorian democracy. In tribute to his career, his colleagues republished the interviews they did with him; In one of them, the journalist Carlos Vera warned him that, because of his denunciations, he was reaping many enemies.
“Do you know what is most important for you to fulfill your plan? Let it be alive Did you see how Luis Carlos Galán ended up in Colombia? ”, He asked him. To which he replied: “One survives by losing fear.”
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