2024-01-05 05:12:01
How are the 450 sit-ups divided? 150 for each judge.
It’s not like the judges were going to exercise. “It’s criminal jargon,” says Ecuador’s Attorney General, Diana Salazar, regarding how they were referring to the bribes of thousands of dollars with which Leandro Norero, alias “El Patrón,” intended to guarantee his release from prison.
Salazar is the head behind an unprecedented investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office that revealed an unprecedented criminal plot in Ecuador, a country mired in violence fueled by criminal groups linked to drug trafficking and that has been surpassing its own homicide records for three years.
The so-called “Metastasis case” was revealed in mid-December, but over the days the authorities have revealed more details regarding the corruption network launched by “El Patrón”, who was murdered in October 2022 in prison. His death paved the way for an investigation that provided an x-ray of the greatest criminal infiltration in the Ecuadorian judicial system.
The chats extracted from the cell phone of the Ecuadorian boss, accused of financing local criminal gangs and for his links with the Mexican cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, are the core of the judicial mega-process that reveals the tentacles of corruption and organized crime in the institutions. of the State.
So far, nine judges are investigated for organized crime. Among them, a former judge of the National Court who is in preventive detention and who became president of the Judiciary Council – the judicial governing body – until days following the case broke out. Also facing charges are three prosecutors, three prison system officials – including a former director – eight police officers and six lawyers.
And this week, the Prosecutor’s Office formalized eight new charges, including his alleged front man, one of his lawyers and several operators to plan and manage crimes, according to the Public Ministry. In total, 39 are being prosecuted.
It all started with an anonymous complaint for money laundering in October 2021 due to the unjustified increase in the Norero family’s assets and exploded a month ago when the results of the investigation of 15 telephone numbers of the Ecuadorian boss arrived.
From one of “El Patrón’s” cell phones came more than 19,000 pages of conversations involving the country’s highest judicial authorities, members of the police and prison leadership, politicians and journalists, according to a review that The Associated Press made of the chats, full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
—I just finished talking to that j (judge) love. Nothing there talking regarding Johanna in 10 days comes up. Tomorrow they were going to give the isr (Israel) resolution. But they are asking a lot.
This is how Norero told his then partner regarding his ability to bribe in exchange for judicial benefits, in this case, for his sister Johanna and his brother Israel.
—And how much that man asked you for love.
— Dial 300k ($300,000).
Later, Norero confirmed the help of police to rescue objects that were seized from him. “Even the police officers who were there helped. “The one who is helping us is a police officer.”
Of a prison guarantee judge he said: “I’m going to give him a present and have him on our side.” That judge, identified as the “mummy”, received an apartment on the beach. For a tax agent, the boss’s gift was a Cartier chain that the Prosecutor’s Office valued at $8,000.
As a result of the anonymous complaint for money laundering, “El Patrón” was arrested in May 2022 along with his partner, his mother, his half-sister and his brother in an operation in which 42 gold bars, six million dollars in cash, weapons and several vehicles.
The dialogues in Norero’s phone chats are full of words and expressions that serve as codes to try to mask what was really happening: bribes to authorities in exchange for help.
The “abs” are thousands of dollars and the “js” are the judges. And the “j” who receive the bribes are called “suicides”, in an allusion to the fact that they are aware of the professional bill that at some point they will pay for colluding with the Ecuadorian boss, according to the authorities’ description of the keys to understand the conversations.
“Pawns” are the police who leak information, alter evidence, rescue paintings, sculptures and clothing that were confiscated from the leader’s house and who, in short, “copy” (support or respond) to “El Patron.”
The “Russian” is a similar assemblyman; the “Turk”, a businessman from the city of Guayaquil who was suspected of “Ravioli”, “Marido”, “Po” or “Dady Yanky”, who is presumed to be Norero’s front man. “The dear one” is one of his lawyers and messengers; “the one with the beret”, a journalist with whom he maintained a relationship of camaraderie; and “the mummy”, the provincial judge who was going to help Norero and his family escape the criminal process and who was considered a key piece.
The “cats” are members of his criminal group that he sent to monitor his targets, as he did with the assemblyman and later assassinated presidential candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, for bringing to light data that bothered his circle of trust.
He also asked the “cats” to follow the prosecutor who was handling his case for money laundering. He even proposed attacking his vehicle or his family if he did not bow down to the bribes:
— Finally I make him put in some Chiclazps
— To her car
—To make him afraid
His lawyer responds that the prosecutor always has police custody and he insists on threats.
— They will be able to take care of her
— Full
—But not to the mother brothers
— Let’s get information from the whole family
Moments later, Norero, who was in the Cotopaxi prison and managed his criminal network from his cell phone, received by message and forwarded the geographical coordinates of the prosecutor’s real location at that same moment. Although “El Patron” and his defender, with whom he chatted, feared that he was in the United States requesting international criminal assistance for his money laundering case, the official was still in Quito.
It has not been clarified how or who sent the boss the live locations of his targets.
Norero was murdered in early October 2022 in prison – without any conviction once morest him -, the same day a hearing was scheduled to charge him with drug trafficking charges. At that time, he was only dealing with a process for money laundering.
With his death in a prison massacre that left another 14 victims and 60 injured, the plot was uncovered with extensive ramifications in the public that was as cryptic in its language as it was explicit in its intentions.
“Let them set a price and we will give it, but no one can be imprisoned,” the leader requested in one of the dozens of conversations regarding bribery to judges who might free his relatives or favor him in his criminal case.
“Tell a journalist that it was an accident, that Sara Ortiz, no one else fucks. “Let them take his cell phone, he escaped in the struggle,” suggested his supposed property administrator, who is a fugitive from Ecuadorian justice in Miami for another hospital corruption plot, to silence journalistic publications regarding him with acts of violence. the plot.
Norero took credit with lightness and laughter for the high rates of deaths in the streets, once morest which the current Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa has promised to fight. “Hahaha, they are cleaning,” he said in a chat, so that “when they come out they will have everything clean,” in reference to the elimination of members of rival gangs.
He also took care of his allies. “We must leave precedents so that they can see that we do not leave the judges out. Let them see the support” or “Help me get those police officers out of trouble.” “They helped us that day.”
And he paid for favorable treatment in prison. “Help me with some deposits”, “But. “Do not register your IDs,” “El Patrón” ordered prizes of 1,000, 2,000 and 500 dollars. “I’m telling the guides here that they’re acting tall,” he said regarding the prison guards at the Cotopaxi prison. “Here it seems like I was the director,” he said in another conversation.
He said he had “arrived” and might ask “directly to Pablo Ramírez”, director of the penitentiary service of the Guillermo Lasso government, to transfer his sister to another prison for health reasons. “And without a cent,” she boasted.
Ramírez left office two days following the prison massacre in which Norero was murdered.
His influence also reached a “colonel who copies” to the point that the capo assumed police expenses. “I got the bill for the maintenance of the patrol cars hahaha,” he said in another chat.
And they even consulted him before issuing rulings on his cases or those of his relatives. “Boss, that is the draft sentence that the J of Sto Dgo sends us!! This is how it would come out; Please read it carefully and let us know if you have any observations; “There are 37 pages,” his lawyer sent him with two attached documents at the end of July 2022.
“Let’s go with faith,” he responded regarding the habeas corpus petition presented in a court in Santo Domingo to be released.
However, he never saw the street once more.
There is no one accused of his murder, but the mountain of exposed chats has opened a gap in the country’s judicial and police system, in what the attorney general considers “a clear x-ray of how drug trafficking has taken over the State.”
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Sara España is editor of the Spanish-language service of The Associated Press in Mexico City.
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