Major drug kingpin murdered in Ecuador

2023-10-12 20:40:02

QUITO (AP) — An important drug trafficking boss in Ecuador was murdered on Thursday in an exclusive urbanization in the north of Guayaquil, authorities confirmed.

According to police information, at 03:15 (0815 GMT) several people entered a home in the exclusive residential complex “Laguna Club”, in the north of Guayaquil, the city that registers the most violent deaths. Shots were heard and a person was found dead.

Police units were investigating the events and the identity of the victim, as well as those responsible. However, from the Ministry of the Interior it was confirmed that Minister Juan Zapata confirmed that it was George Samir Maestre Mena, alias Samir.

According to a report from the Insight Crime organization in 2019, Maestre Mena lived in Guayaquil and was “a businessman dedicated to drug trafficking”, by profession an accountant, who “exercises his criminal activities through third parties.”

In the Ecuador judicial case consultation portal, alias Samir has seven proceedings, between 2014 and 2015, for murder and illicit association.

Former military intelligence colonel, Mario Pazmiño, assured The Associated Press that promotions within the restructuring of the country’s micro cartels “have been generating eliminations of leaders” of different criminal structures such as Maestre Mena.

For the expert, the fall of a leader of a criminal organization implies “a weakening” of its structures and an internal fragmentation, for which “there will necessarily be a response once morest the structure that caused the incident,” he said.

1697143724
#Major #drug #kingpin #murdered #Ecuador