This Wednesday morning, the Ecuadorian Prosecutor’s Office raided the home of the former presidential candidate, leader of the Citizen Revolution movement, within the framework of the case called Petty Cash. The investigation investigates an alleged crime of organized crime for the purposes of money laundering, linked – according to the Public Ministry – to the financing of the 2023 presidential campaign with illicit money from Venezuela.
“It is presumed that cash resources were entering from Venezuela to finance the 2023 presidential campaign,” the Prosecutor’s Office said in a publication on the social network In the raid, carried out by a police contingent, cell phones, passports, laptops and several USB drives were seized.
The procedure was extended to two other properties in Quito and Guayaquil, without the Prosecutor’s Office detailing who they belong to. The former president, leader of the Citizen Revolution, assured that they would be the homes of former presidential candidate Andrés Arauz —González’s partner in the 2023 elections—, assemblyman Patricio Chávez and former superintendent Suad Manssur.
The fiscal action comes a few days after the Government, released on Monday in a five and a half minute video headed by the president. Accompanied by the Ministers of the Interior and Defense, as well as the director of the Financial and Economic Analysis Unit (UAFE), the president outlined the lines of action against criminal violence that in 2023 reached historic figures: 9,216 intentional homicides, the equivalent of one murder per hour in the country.
“These are joint actions of this Government, understanding insecurity as the crime that arises from political corruption,” said Noboa in the video, produced with a cinematographic aesthetic. “For so many years it entrenched itself in this country and used organized crime groups as its tactical teams,” he added. Under this approach, he explained, the state response is not limited to police and military operations, but includes the actions of the UAFE, directed by José Julio Neira, one of the officials closest to the president, who also holds ten other positions in the Executive.
The possibility of investigations against the leaders of Correism had been anticipated by Neira himself on January 3, the same day of the United States operation in Venezuela to capture Nicolás Maduro. “With the fall of the Maduro regime, the political financing network that operated from PDVSA also falls,” he wrote then in
Since the Citizen Revolution they rejected fiscal action. “It is judicial persecution, used as a distraction from the scandals that surround the presidential family. Enough!” wrote Gabriela Rivadeneira, new president of the movement, in X. The organization announced that it will hold a press conference in the next few hours.
