Ecuadorian prosecutors have charged former Interior Minister José Serrano with helping plan the high-profile assassination of a presidential candidate in 2023, marking a crucial moment in the country’s fight against corruption.
On September 3, Ecuador’s Attorney General’s Office formally charged four individuals for masterminding the infamous August 2023 murder of Fernando Villavicencio, a national assemblyman and a leading candidate in the 2023 presidential election. Headlining the prosecutors’ list is Serrano, who held the position of Minister of the Interior from 2011 to 2016 under former President Rafael Correa before briefly serving as President of the National Assembly in 2017 and 2018.
Prosecutors presented evidence that Serrano was in charge of identifying gaps in Villavicencio’s security. To do this, they said, he leveraged his influence within Ecuador’s police force, leading a team “made up of police officers, tasked with reporting the exact moment when the attack could be carried out.”
Serrano’s lawyer denounced the evidence as “conjecture.” The judge presiding over the hearing was highly critical of prosecutors’ arguments, especially of their requests for pretrial detention for the suspects.
“We’re not here to put on a show, we’re here to seek the truth,” Judge María Daniela Ayala said.
Charged alongside Serrano were businessmen Xavier Jordan and Daniel Salcedo and former national assemblyman and Latin Kings member Ronny Aleaga. Jordan was accused of directing and financing the murder operation, Salcedo of monitoring Villavicencio’s movements, and Aleaga of being the link between Jordan and the assassins who carried out the hit. The prosecution did not present a clear motive for the killing.
Jordan, Salcedo, and Aleaga were previously implicated in Metastasis, a massive corruption case that took down a network led by drug trafficker Leandro Norero that was embedded in the highest reaches of the Ecuadorian government. Only Salcedo has been sentenced in the Metastasis case, while Jordan and Aleaga are still at large.
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For his part, Serrano was arrested in Miami on August 7 by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, the Miami Herald reported, and is currently being held at a South Florida detention center. Serrano’s daughter, Verónica, claimed in statements to Ecuadorian press that he was arrested because of his immigration status. Though Serrano’s arrest in the United States may be unrelated to the ongoing investigations against him in Ecuador, he could now face deportation or extradition to his home country, where he will face prosecutors’ charges.
Ecuadorian authorities have previously made numerous arrests and secured convictions related to Villavicencio’s murder. In October 2023, six Colombian citizens accused of links to the hit were murdered in prison. In July 2024, a court sentenced Carlos Edwin Angulo, alias “Invisible,” to 34 years in prison for orchestrating the crime from behind bars. Angulo allegedly headed a cell of the Lobos, one of Ecuador’s most powerful criminal groups.
Still, the Attorney General’s Office has faced persistent criticism, including from Villavicencio’s family, for failing to uncover the intellectual authors of the attack.
“The step taken today by the Attorney General’s Office is important to ensure that this vile crime does not go unpunished. However, we are still far from achieving justice,” Amanda Villavicencio, Fernando’s daughter, said on social media on August 18, following the Attorney General’s Office announcement of its intention to indict the four.
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The charges brought against Serrano may further rattle a political elite once thought to be untouchable. But it could also mark what critics have called a dangerous politicization of anti-corruption efforts.
The Villavicencio murder was the most notorious act of violence in Ecuador’s recent history. More than a leading presidential candidate, Villavicencio was an anti-corruption crusader and journalist who repeatedly denounced cases of high-level graft. His murder, just 11 days before the first round of voting, has become emblematic of Ecuador’s descent into a crisis of violence and criminality from which it has yet to emerge.
“The message conveyed by this magnicide, which in reality was the killing of a journalist, is that these are the consequences you can face if you investigate ‘too much’ or if you dig into certain issues that can touch sensitive nerves in the country,” Mauricio Alarcón Salvador, executive director of Fundación Ciudadanía y Desarrollo, an Ecuadorian anti-corruption and pro-democracy organization, told InSight Crime.
Corruption in Ecuador has long facilitated and protected organized crime and drained state resources, and in charging the alleged masterminds of Villavicencio’s murder, the Attorney General’s Office is looking to build on a string of recent successes against the country’s corrupt political elite.
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In November 2024, authorities secured sentences against 20 individuals in the Metastasis case, including the head of the Judicial Council (Consejo Judicial) and the former director of prisons, for their involvement in Norero’s network. In March 2025, courts sentenced another 10 people, headlined by national assemblyman Pablo Muentes and multiple high-level regional judicial officials.
Serrano, a powerful — and controversial — politician could be the next to fall. As Minister of the Interior in the 2010s, Serrano oversaw a major drop in homicides as well as record drug seizures, the latter of which earned him an award from the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Throughout his tenure, he exerted close personal control over security and justice institutions and retained significant influence in these sectors even after leaving his post.
But the former minister has also faced major corruption accusations, including of providing protection to Edison Washington Prada Álava, alias “Gerald,” who was Ecuador’s most prolific drug trafficker before his arrest in 2017. Serrano has continuously rejected links to drug trafficking while also denying his alleged involvement in numerous other cases involving extortion, kidnapping, and abuse of power.
While the successful prosecution of Serrano would be a big win in tackling corruption, critics of Ecuador’s Attorney General’s Office have highlighted the institution’s push to investigate cases linked to Correa’s allies while ignoring possible cases in other political blocs.
Alarcón shared this view, telling InSight Crime the Attorney General’s Office has acted with “enormous selectivity,” in recent terms, including during Correa’s presidency. “We do not have an independent judiciary,” he added.
Featured image: Former Interior Minister José Serrano. Credit: El Comercio