Ecuador to probe income of judges who free criminal suspects

People walk near a bloodstain on a street in Duran, Ecuador, on October 13, 2024. Seven people were shot dead on the night of October 12 in Ecuador in the third massacre this week in the troubled town of Duran, which is dominated by criminal gangs, police said. — File photo by Agence France-Presse

Ecuador said Friday it will probe the finances of any judge or prosecutor who releases a suspected violent criminal, amid allegations of bribery frustrating the government’s fight against organized crime.

Once-peaceful Ecuador averaged a killing every hour at the start of the year as drug cartels battle for control over cocaine routes that pass through the nation’s ports.

“On countless occasions, the national police has had to apprehend the same criminal up to 10 times because they received benefits from the justice system. This is over,” President Daniel Noboa’s office said in a statement Friday.

READ: Daniel Noboa, Ecuador’s hawkish 37-year-old president

In future, there will be an “analysis of the origin of assets and the legality of the source of funds of all those judges, prosecutors and associates who grant… freedom” to people accused of murder, kidnapping, extortion or drug trafficking, it added.

There are an estimated 40,000 gang members in Ecuador, according to Noboa, and about 20 gangs with links to international cartels.

Recently, a group of people accused of kidnapping four merchants, including a Chinese citizen, were released on the orders of a judge.

The victims were found dead days later, chained, in a pit.

“Criminal economies keep their structures afloat, extending their tentacles into judicial frameworks from which they benefit to achieve impunity,” Interior Minister John Reimberg said in a video on X.

Noboa last year declared Ecuador to be in a state of internal armed conflict, empowering him to deploy the armed forces in the streets and prisons.

But despite his tough-on-crime policies, Ecuador has the highest murder rate in Latin America.

This month, Congress passed a law to combat criminal gangs. It will allow authorities to hold suspects in preventive detention for longer periods and provide presidential pardons to police and soldiers convicted of crimes in the line of duty. /das