Three years after presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated in Quito, Ecuador could be closing in on an answer to who ordered the murder. This week on The InSight Take, Deborah Bonello and senior investigator James Bargent break down the case against the alleged masterminds, and why the case has become a test of whether Ecuador can hold its political-criminal elite accountable.
Deborah Bonello: [00:00:00] Three years after gunmen shot presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio dead as he left a campaign rally in Quito, Ecuador could finally be approaching an answer to the question that has hung over his case ever since: Who ordered the hit? As of this week, a judge is deliberating on whether to send seven people to trial as the alleged intellectual authors of the assassination. I’m Deborah Bonello, managing editor of InSight Crime, and I’m joined this week by James Bargent, one of our senior investigators who’s been tracking this case closely. James, thanks for joining me.
James Bargent: [00:00:37] Thanks, Deb. Good to be here.
Deborah Bonello: [00:00:39] So, to remind our viewers and our readers, because I think a lot of our audience remembers the shock of this murder, which happened in 2023, tell us about before we get into the nitty gritty, its significance and what it means in Ecuador today.
James Bargent: [00:00:57] Yeah. I mean, I think you could make a strong argument that this is the most notorious murder in Ecuador’s history. Certainly in its recent history. It is a killing that changed the direction of an election, changed the direction of a country, as a result. And I’d say you could say it really changed how Ecuador saw itself as a nation. So Ecuador was already in the middle of a kind of security crisis with the prison massacres, rising violence on the streets, but taking it to the level where you see a man who’s standing for president gunned down in the streets outside a campaign rally, not in some gang-ridden barrio or some, you know, strategic drug trafficking territory, but in the middle of Quito, just two weeks before an election, I think that really shocked people in a way that the country has yet to recover from.
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Deborah Bonello: [00:01:51] So tell us a little bit about Villavicencio and his history in Ecuador, his campaign, and the connection with organized crime that was there before the murder.
Who Was Fernando Villavicencio?
James Bargent: [00:02:06] Yeah. So Fernando Villavicencio, he made his name initially as an investigative journalist. So he broke a lot of stories on corruption and links between the state and organized crime. And he really ruffled a lot of feathers in this world. He wasn’t someone that was only focused on kind of street-level crime. He named names. And those were often very powerful people. And then in the early 2020s, I think it was 2021, he made the step into politics, and he got elected to the National Assembly. Now, there at the National Assembly, he led a government oversight committee, and the work he did on this committee was not the sort of staid conservative, we are making a few recommendations, sort of reports. It was pretty bombastic. He would be in front of a camera, waving photos and incriminating documents and again, naming the names that other people would not say. And this obviously made him a lot of enemies.
Deborah Bonello: [00:03:09] Yeah. That’s a dangerous place to be in, right?
James Bargent: [00:03:16] Absolutely. And again, it’s one thing to kind of talk about the operational level of organized crime that we all know are criminals. If you talk about Ecuador’s most famous gangs, you know, the Choneros, the Lobos, everyone knows who they are. They are violent, dangerous criminals. But if you start naming powerful businessmen and people with political connections and even people at the heart of government, then that is another level that you’re kind of opening a window to and that no one in Ecuador is really talking about—or very few people in Ecuador were really talking about in the way that he was.
Deborah Bonello: [00:03:50] Sure. And, you know, at our organization, I mean, this is a regional dynamic, right? It’s something that, as journalists and as documenters, we face down every day. But it does seem that his whole political identity was based around this issue of pointing out corruption and calling that out. So how did he build his political campaign around that?
Inside Villavicencio’s Anti-Corruption Presidential Campaign
James Bargent: [00:04:17] Absolutely. This was at the heart of his political campaign. And we have to say, he was not a front-runner to be elected president. This was not a campaign on track to the presidency itself, but it was a campaign that was trying to change the conversation around these issues. So he was at the heart of a new political movement called “Construye,” or like build or construct. And he was standing as the presidential candidate for this new movement, and really, his entire campaign was based around the idea of tackling corruption and organized crime, but not in the sort of way that we’ve seen since, which is very much focused on kind of repression and military activity, but in a way that was more investigations and breaking the links between the state and organized crime, which was something very different and tackled very powerful interests.
What Happened the Night Villavicencio Was Killed
Deborah Bonello: [00:05:16] So walk me through what exactly happened on that night in 2023.
James Bargent: [00:05:21] Yeah. So we’re talking, I think it was about a week and a half before the vote. And Villavicencio had been at a campaign event. He left the building where he was ambushed by gunmen just as he was getting into his car, and he was shot dead on the spot. Now, one of the assassins was killed by police on the scene. And then six others were immediately captured. But within a pretty short time, those six people were dead. They were killed inside the prisons. There were another 13 in total, so another seven people were arrested in connection with actually carrying out the murder. Another one of those was also murdered in the prisons. And then the remaining people were sentenced. But these were the people that, you know, who did the actual act itself, who were responsible for executing the killing. They were not the people who ordered and organized the murder. And so for a long time, it really seemed like this case was just going to stop there, that we were going to know who pulled the trigger, but we were never going to know why or who ordered it. But then over the last year or so, the prosecutors, the Attorney General’s Office has built up a case as to who the intellectual authors were, why they wanted him dead, and this case involves some extremely powerful people.
Deborah Bonello: [00:06:51] So it’s worth saying as well that when, when he was killed, it wasn’t a bolt from the blue, like there had been at least 18 incidents, I think, of political violence against candidates and officials between January and August. I think ACLED gave us those figures. So Ecuador was already living through what was a pretty noticeable spike in political violence. But obviously Villavicencio was the most prominent victim. And it does sound like there are two separate prosecutions running here, right? One was resolved, but the other one is still very much open.
The Seven Accused: Who Are Ecuador’s Alleged Intellectual Authors?
James Bargent: [00:07:31] Yeah, absolutely. This is the one we’re talking about now and vis-a-vis intellectual authors. So this gets to the heart of who ordered this murder and why they ordered it. And there are seven people going on trial now. And I think together, these seven people really represent a snapshot of the elites of Ecuadorian organized crime. So you’ve got two guys, Javier Jordán and Daniel Salcedo, who are these corrupt—I think we can say that, they’ve both been sentenced for kind of corruption charges, although Jordán remains in the United States and has not actually seen any prison time, Salcedo is in prison—who are very kind of politically connected businessmen accused of all sorts of acts of corruption. Then you have Ronny Aleaga. Aleaga is a politician who was previously a member of the Latin Kings gang, and he underwent the government’s pacification program, which kind of offered these gang members a route back into civilian life, which he took very successfully. He became a leading politician. And then there is perhaps the most controversial name of all on this list, José Serrano.
José Serrano: The Fall of One of Ecuador’s Most Powerful Politicians
James Bargent: José Serrano is one of the most important political figures of Ecuador of the past 10, 15 years. He was the interior minister during the presidency of Rafael Correa, and he was an extraordinarily powerful exterior minister. He was also a justice minister before that, and he was the president of the National Assembly after that. So he’s a man who there have long been rumors and accusations of corruption and ties to organized crime. But he’s also been a man who for a long time was seen as untouchable, and this case has finally kind of touched him. It’s finally reached him. And then the other three people that are standing on trial are members of the Lobos criminal organization, who were the ones accused of organizing the murder.
Deborah Bonello: [00:09:43] So talk to us a little bit about the Los Lobos figures. And were they always sort of on the charge sheet as well, or did they come in later?
Los Lobos’ Role: Wilmer ‘Pipo’ Chavarría and the $1 Million Contract
James Bargent: [00:09:53] These are the people that have been added to it most recently. So obviously the leading figure is Wilmer Chavarria, alias “Pipo,” who is the leader of the Lobos. He is currently in Spain fighting extradition to Ecuador. And then the other two are kind of second-level commanders. So the Lobos, according to the prosecutor’s theory of the case—should stress that all of this is not proven yet—but according to the allegations being made, they were paid $1 million to organize the hit. So to contract the hitmen, to get the arms, to organize all the logistics. But they’re not the people who wanted him dead. For that, we really have to look at this alliance of business and political actors.
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Deborah Bonello: [00:10:40] Sure. And you can, it’s a very easy narrative in a way, as we’ve seen over decades, to blame the big bad mafia for what are much more widespread problems embedded in the sort of texture of a country. Right? I mean, has Pipo made any public claims or statements around the accusations.
Pipo’s Accusation Against President Noboa
James Bargent: [00:11:08] Yeah. Pipo made a very controversial statement around this. He has accused President Daniel Noboa of being behind the Villavicencio murder. It is important to say, he’s not provided very much evidence of this. Noboa did benefit from the murder, there’s no doubt about that. It kind of catapulted him and his hardline security agenda to the front of the election campaign, and he was really struggling beforehand. So there’s no doubt that he did benefit politically from what happened, but there is no evidence linking Noboa to the murder itself, at least none that we’ve seen publicly. And there is a very strong motivation for Pipo to make these accusations. He is currently fighting extradition in Spain, and so this is kind of part of an argument that if he is sent back to [Ecuador], his life will be in danger because he is making accusations against extremely powerful political figures—in fact, against the president himself. So I think we have to take those accusations probably with a grain of salt.
Deborah Bonello: [00:12:14] We do. And we have also seen cases across the region, you know, very much take as evidence the words of convicted traffickers against other traffickers or presidents. As we saw in the case of Honduras, you know, the now pardoned former president, a lot of the case against him was built on the words of traffickers he had extradited during his time, en fin. It’s, you know, it is obviously a very self-interested allegation by Pipo, but also that doesn’t mean that it’s not going to influence the way that this case bears out. So how should we treat that editorially, do you think?
James Bargent: [00:13:04] I mean, obviously, I think it’s something you’ve got to report on. He’s making it as an official statement, as part of the judicial process. But we have to put that in the context of the evidence, and so far the evidence is pretty strong—well, I don’t want to prejudge the trial—but there is substantial evidence that the prosecutors have assembled for their theory of the case. And so far, the case against Noboa consists of what Pipo says.
Deborah Bonello: [00:13:32] So if you put the whole theory together, what’s the shape of it?
How the Alleged Plot Came Together: From “Los Tetones” to Leandro Norero
James Bargent: [00:13:38] Yeah. So really this—and again, just to re-stress, this is the prosecutor’s theory of the case, all these are allegations that have yet to be proven—but for the prosecutors, this started with Javier Jordán. Jordán is a businessman that’s been involved in a lot of highly questionable dealings and has appeared in some high-ranking corruption cases for his connections to drug traffickers and senior figures in organized crime. Now, Jordán was named by Villavicencio in alleged acts of corruption. He was also kind of humiliated by him a little bit. Villavicencio got hold of this photo of Jordán and a lot of other kind of politically connected, allegedly corrupt businessmen at a pool party in Miami. So, they’re all sitting there in their bathing suits with their cocktails in the swimming pool. And this photo became known as, “Los Tetones,” which doesn’t translate very well in English, but let’s say it refers to gentlemen who are generously proportioned in the chest area—”the moobs,” I guess you could say. And this is how this photo is always referred to in Ecuador, and that group of people. So he was, his business was badly affected, his reputation was badly affected, and he was kind of publicly humiliated by Villavicencio.
So the case really begins, there are intercepted communications between Jordán and a drug trafficker, Leandro Norero, who’s one of the most powerful drug traffickers of recent years in Ecuador, and they’re basically saying, “We’ve got to do something about this Villavicencio guy.” But before any kind of plan could progress with them, Norero was murdered in prison. He was in prison at the time all this was happening, and he was murdered, it’s pretty safe to assume, by the Lobos, who he used to work with. He used to be their kind of financial sponsor, like, financial backer, but they evidently had a falling out, and he was brutally murdered in prison.
James Bargent: [00:15:46] But from there, the conspiracy—again, this is the theory of the case, not proven—began to involve other people. So this is where we see Daniel Salcedo, who is another alleged, well, he’s a convicted, corrupt businessman, this kind of playboy businessman with political connections figure who was convicted of crimes and was in prison with Norero. So Jordán involves—allegedly involves Salcedo. They allegedly got Ronny Aleaga involved as the kind of point of contact between the worlds of politics and organized crime. So remember, Aleaga is the ex-gang-member-turned-politician. And then, according to the prosecutors, they got Serrano involved.
Now, Serrano has long been accused of maintaining a kind of clandestine network within the state of current and former kind of police and intelligence operations. So according to the witness testimonies we’ve seen so far, his role was to use this network to kind of plan, do all the intelligence and logistical planning to allow the murder to take place. So they kind of allegedly tracked Villavicencio, his movements, when his bodyguards, and kind of identified the moment of opportunity when they could carry out the murder. And that’s when they brought in the Lobos and paid them the million dollars to kind of contract the hitmen and get the killing actually carried out.
Deborah Bonello: [00:17:23] So we’re talking about, if I understand you—because this does sound like the making of a Hollywood movie, I’m not going to lie—we’re talking about a consortium of businessmen, former security officials, sitting politicians, former politicians essentially contracting out the killing to allegedly a criminal group, which sounds like—remind me of the name of the chap who was killed in prison, Norega, I think?
James Bargent: [00:17:58] Norero.
Deborah Bonello: [00:17:59] Norero. So Norero was initially kind of interested or self-interested in the murder, but the Lobos, this seems like more of a kind of business opportunity for them essentially? Potentially, obviously. Is that the right read?
Mapping Ecuador’s Organized Crime Pyramid: Elites, Traffickers, and Street Gangs
James Bargent: [00:18:13] Absolutely. And this maps entirely with how we’ve modeled Ecuadorian organized crime. So when we investigated these groups, the Lobos, other groups like them, the Choneros, the Tiguerones, the way we map this out is that they are kind of the intermediaries between the streets and the elites of organized crime. So they’re the ones that can get the jobs done, whether that job is carrying out assassinations, or whether that job is getting drugs onto a container ship or dispatching it off on a go-fast boat. And then at the elite level, you have transnational drug traffickers, people like Norero; you have corrupt politicians, people allegedly like José Serrano; and you have these kinds of professionally corrupt, powerful businessmen, people like Daniel Salcedo. And the connections are that these guys are the ones that contract groups like the Lobos to do all the dirty work, and then the Lobos have their kind of, their manpower in street gangs, so that they can then outsource these out or give orders to these youths on the streets who then actually do the dirty work. So this case, if it should be proven to be true, maps almost exactly over the model of Ecuadorian organized crime that our investigations have revealed.
Deborah Bonello: [00:19:35] Okay. So let’s zoom out a little bit, and this brings us a little back to Noboa, who of course is an extremely important ally to the United States in the region. He’s a huge disciple of the Shield of the Americas strategy the Trump administration is pushing and has been sort of the architect of a lot of what we’re seeing in terms of Ecuador’s current situation. So talk us through a little bit about what was happening in Ecuador—and continues to, if we’re talking about the security situation—at the time that Villavicencio was killed.
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James Bargent: [00:20:20] Yeah. So, 2023 was really a moment in which the country was spiraling out of control. And this started with gangs like the Choneros and the Lobos within the prison system, where they had all kind of been part of one criminal federation—the Lobos, the Tiguerones—all these groups worked as part of the Choneros as different factions, but then they all fragmented and turned on each other in this really brutal wave of violence. So this is where we saw prison massacres, but where we also saw really spiraling murder rates on the streets. And we saw, and from a broader perspective, a diversification of criminal interests. This is when we also saw as these groups spread, they got stronger, they got more violent, they also got into more criminal economies. We saw extortion explode. We saw illegal mining explode.
Ecuador’s Security Collapse: From Prison Wars to Noboa’s Hardline Response
So Ecuador, it went from one of the safest countries in South America to one of the most dangerous countries in the world in the space of about three years. And 2023, really was the moment where the country was starting to have a reckoning to really understand just how far and how quickly it had fallen. And of course, Noboa and Villavicencio in some way, there was an overlap between what they were proposing to do about this. Both of them were saying, this is the most important issue facing our country right now is organized crime and the damage it’s causing. But whereas Villavicencio was really focused on the overlap with the state and networks of corruption, and really proposing to kind of investigate and dismantle these networks, Noboa, who ended up winning that election, has always focused on military force and acts of repression. And what we’ve seen so far is that these have not achieved sustainable results. We’ve seen kind of dips in violence rates with military deployments to the streets, to the prisons, and then we’ve just seen them rebound. So that’s kind of taken us to where we are at the moment in Ecuador.
Deborah Bonello: [00:22:38] Sure. And I think. Villavicencio’s murder was kind of a sign of a much larger collapse, right? It wasn’t a one-off. And so tell us why now, going forward, this case is so important in Ecuador.
James Bargent: [00:22:57] Well, I think as I mentioned before, for a long time, it kind of looked like the intellectual authors of this were going to get away with it. They were going to get away with murdering a presidential candidate on the streets of Quito outside of a campaign event. Now, we are not talking about some drug trafficking or gang warfare. That is a statement murder, and it looked like it was going to stay in impunity. The prosecutors were wildly criticized for their handling of the case. The police have been hugely criticized as well and partially implicated. So we’re looking at a case that if Ecuador did not come to a conclusion, it would have kind of been this open wound. Uh, it would have been something that remained symbolic of not only of just how far Ecuador has fallen in terms of the security situation or the insecurity in the country, but also about the incapacity and the corruption at the heart of the state. So Ecuador at least now has the opportunity to bring a bit of closure, which I think as a country, it’s really symbolically important as much as kind of practically important to show that it can genuinely handle these levels of or do something about this crime and corruption.
Why the Villavicencio Case Is a Test for Ecuador
Deborah Bonello: [00:24:23] Sure. And of course, wanting to is not the same as doing so. Right. So we, again, this perennial problem of cases like this that are so important and so in the public, in the public consciousness, and in the public conversation. Tell us where things stand right now in terms of this case.
James Bargent: [00:24:45] Yeah. So as you mentioned in your intro, we are waiting on this judge’s decision right now. So the prosecutor has kind of brought the initial evidence, not the trial evidence, but just laid out what it’s got. And now the judge has to make the decision whether to send these people to trial or not. Now it’s important to point out, not all of them are in Ecuador or under custody. José Serrano, at the moment, is in immigration custody in the United States, where he’s been for a long time without any kind of resolution to his case. Jordán is free in the United States, as far as I’m aware. And Ronny Aleaga is believed to be somewhere in Venezuela, but no one really seems to know. So of those kind of four guys, there’s only Salcedo that’s in prison, and Salcedo has turned witness. So we’ve got a long way to go before we get to justice.
But this is a really key moment, because if the judge decides at this point that the prosecutors do not have enough evidence to bring these guys to trial, then we are right back at square one. And this represents—whether these guys are guilty or not—they certainly represent a class of political and economic and criminal elites, but rightly or wrongly, because they haven’t been proven guilty, but certainly, I think in the popular imagination, whoever’s responsible for it will have evaded justice. And where the prosecutors are and where Ecuador goes from that point is anyone’s guess.
Deborah Bonello: [00:26:22] Yeah. I mean, having known much less about the case than you at the beginning of this conversation, I’m now kind of on the edge of my seat to see what happens next. James, thanks for explaining that to us.
James Bargent: [00:26:35] Okay.
Deborah Bonello: [00:26:37] You’ve just watched The InSight Take, a weekly video chat analysis on the biggest crime stories in Latin America. You can find this episode, of course, and past episodes in our multimedia section or on YouTube and Spotify. If there’s a story or subject you’d like us to dig into a little more, please reach out to me at flagship@insightcrime.org and we’ll be back with another InSight Take next week. Bye for now.