2023-08-12 07:42:25
A Colombian hit man killed presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio and left Ecuador in chaos and sadness. He took the truth with him, since he died in the crossfire that he had with the police after the assassination. The neighboring country was thus left in the midst of one of the hardest moments in its history. “A breaking point, a national tragedy”, as the Minister of Government, Henry Cucalón, acknowledged to SEMANA.
The trace of Colombia in such a crime, with six compatriots captured for the facts, opened a series of questions. Why was the candidate assassinated? Who is behind the crime? Are there Colombians running the mafias in Ecuador? Were there politicians interested in silencing Villavicencio?
All these questions were opened in the line of investigation led, at the request of President Guillermo Lasso, by the FBI, which will be present in both countries. For now, two things are known: the names of those who participated in the crime and that there are political interests behind the death.
For now, two things are clear about this assassination: Colombian hitmen participated in it and there were political interests behind the masterminds. | Photo: 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
The Ecuadorian Prosecutor’s Office gave the names of those involved: Andrés M., José N., Adey G., Camilo R., Jules C. and John R. The hearing was very detailed and the prosecutor exposed “22 elements of conviction raised both in the scene of the crime as in the raids”.
Among these were the versions of witnesses, the autopsy protocol, the results of ballistic tests and the analysis of the videos from the security cameras.
“The autopsy protocol indicates that the victim was shot from long distance, while the ballistics report determined that the .223 caliber shells match one of the rifles found in the raids. In addition to a fingerprint found on a motorcycle abandoned by those now processed, “explained the entity. The murder weapon is in the possession of the authorities.
Villavicencio was one of the toughest opponents of Rafael Correa. The former president persecuted and insulted him. | Photo: AFP or licensors
The media 90 minutes also gave details of the alleged murderer. He was from Cali, barely 19 years old and his name would be José López. In 2022 he was detained in his hometown for attempted murder and last year in Manizales for illegal possession of weapons. Fifteen days ago he traveled to Ecuador and they are trying to establish if he was the one who recruited the other Colombians.
The violence that the neighboring country is experiencing evokes the worst moments of the past in Colombia. “I warned him… God save him.” This is how the journalist Carlos Vera published a video in which he summarizes the tragedy that the candidate experienced. He wasn’t the one leading in the polls, but amid Ecuador’s chaotic political landscape he had a good chance of winning. A decent man, from the center, a journalist by trade, a good speaker and without a shameful past, but who had an inri on his forehead due to the multiple denunciations he had made against the crime that is entrenched in power.
Six Colombians were captured. They found a suitcase with rifles, three grenades and 384 bullet cartridges. | Photo: AFP or licensors
“There is an alleged crime of embezzlement and illicit association,” explained the candidate. He assured that there were videos between Jorge Glas and the former director of the hydrocarbons agency. Villavicencio knew of the threats against his life, but said that he would not back down because “leaving a ship driven by criminals would be extremely dangerous… Those who trade with the mafias have their own funeral home in advance.”
It was not the first time that Villavicencio had acknowledged that he knew the risk he was running. In a demonstration, he assured that the country was imprisoned by a “political mafia, financed by drug traffickers.” And he released a premonitory phrase: “I’m not afraid of them. Let them come no more. The only thing they can do is kill me.”
And they do it like that. The journalist was at a political rally last Wednesday outside the Anderson school, in the north of Quito. The video of what happened is impressive. It is barely 15 seconds in which the candidate is seen leaving, while a crowd shouts enthusiastically: “Fernando! Ferdinand!” The politician walks calmly and gets into the truck, and just at that moment, when he is already sitting in the car, but the door is still closing, a burst of shots is heard. Everything becomes chaos and the one he is recording throws himself, like everyone else, to the floor. Three of those shots hit the head of Fernando Villavicencio, who did not make it to the medical center alive.
The images of the death of Fernando Villavicencio are shocking. They show how a hit man coldly shoots him three times in the head.
The candidate had become a very uncomfortable figure for the establishment. He was in a certain way an outsider of the political class. He had worked in the newspaper El Universo and with Vanguardia magazine.
For years he was persecuted by Rafael Correa, to such an extent that his house was searched and the court sentenced him to 18 months for considering his complaints insulting. Villavicencio had to flee and took refuge in the Amazon. He requested asylum in Lima and in the United States.
In 2020, after continuing to drill into several of the scandals against Correa, he launched into politics. He won his seat in the National Assembly and three years later ran for president.
The enemies who wanted to torpedo this road were quite a few. Hours after his murder, the Los Lobos criminal group claimed responsibility for the crime. In a video some hooded men appear, dressed in black, armed to the teeth and making the V for victory. The man who speaks says that he has a message on behalf of his top boss, Pipo, and Junior Esteban. “We assume responsibility for the events that occurred this afternoon,” he says euphorically. Those who accompanied him shout: “Wolf, wolf, wolf, haughty.”
It was no secret to anyone that Villavicencio’s campaign axes made crime uncomfortable in Ecuador. | Photo: AFP or licensors
Los Lobos is one of the two most dangerous criminal gangs in Ecuador. The other, the Choneros, also wanted to see Villavicencio dead and had sent him threats. The same alias Fito, the head of the illegal group, who is in jail, had done it. “They are going to break me,” Villavicencio had said when denouncing those threats. The intimidation would have been sent by WhatsApp. “I know you are responsible for security, but today you will not survive… I am watching you,” they had written to him.
According to the organization InSight Crime, “Los Lobos have become the second largest criminal group in Ecuador, with more than 8,000 members distributed in the country’s prisons. The group has participated in several bloody prison massacres in Ecuador.” The video, however, was questioned from the beginning, and then another appeared in which a group of members of that gang, already convicted and in jail, denied the crime. “Ecuador do not be fooled, we are the Wolves. We do not cover our faces, no one speaks for us and we do comply with peace. We clarify and reject the assassination of the presidential candidate, Mr. Fernando Villavicencio”, they maintained from prison.
It was no secret to anyone that Villavicencio’s campaign axes made crime in Ecuador uncomfortable, but at the close of this edition it was not clear if these gangs were responsible for his death. His political proposal had focused on security, as well as the need to reduce environmental destruction and combat corruption. For his wife, Verónica Sarauz, Fernando was killed because he “had a thousand and one threats from all these people who were exposed in their journalistic investigations and in the legislative work that he was carrying out.” She believes that there are powerful politicians behind the death of her husband.
Villavicencio made public the flights on which Álex Saab traveled with Piedad Córdoba to Quito and the links that there were with his country.
The criminals also had everything given for the crime. Despite the threats, and very similar to the case of Luis Carlos Galán, his security scheme was deficient. The car, for example, was not armored.
But not only big criminals were after him. Villavicencio was an expert in denouncing how the mafias operated within the State. Being a member of the legislative assembly, he investigated corruption in the oil contracts of the governments of Rafael Correa and Lenín Moreno. And, particularly, the Petrochina case. He also denounced links between politicians and drug traffickers.
If he were elected president, he planned to implement a national anti-terrorist plan that would have as its starting point the identification of the most dangerous organizations operating in the country, such as drug trafficking, illegal mining, corruption and bribery. All this, in view of his interconnection with the political sphere.
Colombia was not alien to him. The candidate had also spoken about the most critical issues in the politics of this country, especially the left, for many years an unconditional ally of Correa. Nicolás Petro, for example, was the one who made public that the Ecuadorian candidate for deputy Raisa Vulgarín was a partner of Camilo Burgos, a cousin of the president’s son, who supposedly received the money that unholy people gave during campaign times.
He had also denounced links between Piedad Córdoba, Álex Saab, former president Rafael Correa and the Farc. “From the financing of the Farc to the correato in 2006 to the contributions of the Tetons and the Albanian mafia to the 2021 campaigns, they have contaminated politics with drug money and corruption. Everything is rotten, we are going with the good people to defeat organized crime ”, he had said in the National Assembly of his country in March of this year.
In his role as a deputy, he also denounced the flights that Senator Piedad Córdoba made with Saab and her children through Ecuador. Likewise, he assured that the businessman from Barranquilla, currently imprisoned in the United States, had access to the Ecuadorian treasury in an operation that “allowed a drain of 2,697 million dollars from the Ecuadorian reserve and put the liquidity of the entire economy at risk.” On another occasion, he caused a stir by sharing an email in which Córdoba demanded the payment of money to the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sebin) of Venezuela in 2019.
Villavicencio clarified that he had seen it in Gerardo Reyes’ book on Saab and decided to publish it in his accounts to demonstrate the closeness of this left-wing network with his country. “Piedad Córdoba arrived in Ecuador and it was like arriving at her house, she went to the palace with the highest confidence of Rafael Correa. What’s more, she was directly part of the peace talks and meetings with senior leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and later also of the National Liberation Army (ELN),” she said in a local media outlet.
In this sea of enemies, some shark decided to end his life. The political situation in Ecuador, facing the early elections that will be held on August 20, was left in very difficult conditions. President Lasso went back to the state of emergency and the future of the neighboring country looks even worse than before. The truth will surely come soon and will shake both nations.
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