How Ecuador’s anti-corruption presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio’s killing was planned

Five people will go on trial for the murder of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, gunned down by hitmen on August 9, 2023, as he was leaving a political rally at a school in the north of Ecuador’s capital, Quito, just days before the first round of early elections.

In a hearing that lasted two days, the Prosecutor’s Office presented evidence to suggest Carlos A., aka “El Invisible,” was the perpetrator of the assassination, the details of which were drafted at the Cotopaxi prison where he was serving a sentence for arms trafficking. The other four detainees are being considered his co-perpetrators and accomplices.

None of the five detainees was identified as the actual mastermind behind the murder of the 59-year-old journalist-turned-politician who had turned up documents in the 2020 Sobornos corruption scandal that saw former president Rafael Correa and more than a dozen from his government receiving prison sentences. Villavicencio had also flagged up links between organized crime and Ecuadorian politics just days before he was murdered.

One of the main pieces of evidence for the Attorney General’s Office is the advance testimony of a protected witness, who gave details of how two alleged leaders of the Lobos gang worked out the logistics of the attack on Villavicencio a month prior to it being carried out. The planning was entrusted to El Invisible, who was being held in Cotopaxi and who hired Colombian hitmen to execute the killing, among them Johan Castillo, alias “Ito,” the 18-year-old assassin who died in the subsequent shootout. El Invisible assumed the task of planning Villavicencio’s assassination after a failed attempt on the politician’s life at another rally in the city of Santo Domingo, two hours from the capital. At the hearing, the prosecutor in charge of the case read the witness statement revealing the motives for the crime:

“Why would they want to kill this person?”

“They undertake the job and they have the right to half of Quito, to the management of its prisons.”

According to the protected witness, Villavicencio’s murder allowed the Lobos gang to “move up the ranks,” lending them access to prison management so they could reduce their sentences and, in the case of several, secure their release. In order to make the deal, they paid off lawyers and officials from the Attorney General’s Office in Quito. Thirteen people were arrested in the case, but six Colombians were murdered in the cells of Litoral prison in Guayaquil. According to the autopsy, they died of asphyxiation while another of the detainees was found dead in his cell in the Inca prison in Quito, one month after the crime.

The Ecuadorian Attorney General’s Office singles out Laura C, aka “Flaca,” as the one in charge of logistics. She arranged for the purchase of Villavicencio’s political party T-shirts and hats so that the assassins could mingle among his supporters at the political rally on August 9. She also provided the assassins with weapons, ammunition, motorcycles and vehicles, and set up meetings prior to the assassination. One such took place the night before the crime, in which the gunmen gathered to listen to instructions from El Invisible via videoconference from prison, one of which was ensuring the motorbikes had sufficient fuel. At this point, Laura C. took the opportunity to walk around the outside of the school’s stadium where Villavicencio would be gunned down, then everyone went to sleep.

Under investigation for the murder of a candidate for popular election, the five detainees could face between 22 and 26 years in prison. “Once the material authors have been identified, it is time to go after the intellectual authors,” said Verónica Saruz, Villavicencio’s wife on X, formerly Twitter. “That is, those who Fernando Villavicencio was getting in the way of.” The testimony of the protected witness will also come into play in a parallel investigation to identify the intellectual authors of Villavicencio death.

Meanwhile, the FBI is lending its support to the investigations at the request of Ecuador’s government, offering a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the conspirators and masterminds behind the assassination.

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