She is not a fortune teller, but weeks before Attorney General Diana Salazar anticipated
one of the worst drug attacks in Ecuador.
"Let the country be prepared," she announced after removing the most sensitive fibers of the mafias and their tentacles in power.
"The response to this operation will surely be an escalation of violence," the 42-year-old woman continued without hesitation on December 14.
He had just revealed the Metastasis investigation, described as
the cornerstone of "narcopolitics" in Ecuador:
there is a "deep structural decomposition that is rampant in the country. A system consumed by the cancer of corruption," he added.
Judges, politicians, prosecutors, police officers, a former director of the penitentiary authority and many other members of high levels of power were accused of benefiting criminal organizations in exchange for money, gold, prostitutes, apartments and luxuries.
With an iron fist, the first black woman to reach the head of the Prosecutor's Office unraveled the plot after scrutinizing thousands of chats and call logs from the phone of a feared boss murdered in prison in October 2022 in a riot.
Since then, in few public appearances she wears a bulletproof vest and is protected by a robust security scheme: "I say it with a first and last name. Now, come and kill me," she said defiantly during a hearing, when she requested the imprisonment of eight new involved.
When corruption and drug trafficking come together, we have a real cancer in society.
This case reminds us that we cannot give up and that together we can rescue the country from the hands of crime.
We will not allow impunity!
https://t.co/m0lz7msvg3 https://t.co/MuzHGDfVnI
— Diana Salazar M. (@DianaSalazarM2) December 14, 2023
Criminal fury and wave of terror
On January 7, Salazar's prediction came true.
Over the course of a week, drug traffickers put the Ecuadorian State in check with hundreds of hostages in prisons, attacks with explosives, armed attacks on the press and shootings, in
a wave of violence that has left around twenty dead.
When the situation seemed under control, anti-mafia prosecutor César Suárez, who was investigating the spectacular takeover in the middle of the broadcast perpetrated by armed men on the TC television channel on January 9, was murdered this Wednesday in Guayaquil.
"In the face of the murder of our colleague César Suárez (...) I am going to be emphatic: organized crime groups, criminals, terrorists will not stop our commitment to Ecuadorian society," Salazar stated in X.
Police deployment next to the car in which prosecutor César Suárez was murdered this Wednesday, in Guyaquil.
Photo: EFE
Accusation of Rafael Correa
Salazar was born in June 1981 in Ibarra, in the northern Andes and known as the White City, with about 160,000 inhabitants.
According to what he told local media, his psychologist mother raised four children alone.
He studied Political Science, has a doctorate in Jurisprudence and several diplomas in human rights and protection of people of African descent.
In 2011 he became a local prosecutor.
He reached the top position in 2019 and a year later
he prosecuted the popular former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) for corruption
and recommended the maximum sentence of eight years.
Condemned and in exile in Belgium, he occasionally launches attacks on her: "Diana Salazar is so clumsy that she shows it herself," the former president wrote on the X network on January 8.
"My scale of values does not include contacting, threatening, or talking to convicted persons or fugitives from justice," the prosecutor replied.
Salazar had just called Correa's then vice president, Jorge Glas, to deliver his version in an investigation for embezzlement in public works contracted after an earthquake in 2016.
Glas then took refuge in the Mexican embassy in Quito and the court ordered his preventive detention, at the request of the prosecutor.
Salazar's detractors criticize him for attacking Correa and not advancing other relevant investigations.
But others defend her: "I would describe her as a woman with courage, talent and determination," Gustavo Medina, former attorney general, told AFP, an organization that acts as the state's lawyer.
emblematic cases
Elected for a period of six years and through meritorious competition, Salazar amasses emblematic cases of corruption.
Among the most notable investigations is the so-called FIFA Gate, which ended with the 10-year prison sentence of the former president of the Ecuadorian Football Federation, Luis Chiriboga, for money laundering.
He also kept an eye on
the plot of the Brazilian firm Odebrecht
for the payment of bribes, in which Glas was sentenced to six years in prison in 2017.
Salazar has been called the Ecuadorian Loretta Lynch, due to her similarity to the attorney general of the United States who also uncovered nests of corruption and was
the first black woman
to assume that position in her country.
In 2021, the United States Department of State recognized Salazar as an "anti-corruption champion" for being an example "of heroin to judges, lawyers and prosecutors throughout South America."
Although she has been criticized for her close proximity to North Americans, Ecuador's first female prosecutor, Mariana Yépez (1999-2005), believes that many of the claims have to do with machismo.
Salazar has reported racism and death threats against her and her daughter.
Source: AFP
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