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Bombshell investigation exposes Ecuador gov't cartel conspiracy
By Oscar León - April 9, 2025
An investigative report by journalist Andres Duran has placed Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa at in the middle of a system that has seen his violence-plagued country turned into a laundromat for transnational drug cartels.
The Grayzone's Oscar Leon speaks to Duran, who had to go into exile to save his own life, and outlines the shocking details of the Ecuadorian state's collusion with the cartels.
Ecuador teeters on the edge of a narco abyss, awash in violence, and with its dollarized economy and strategic ports transformed into a cocaine highway through Guayaquil to Europe and beyond.
President Daniel Noboa, heir to a banana empire exporting $3.5 billion yearly, presides over a nation where austerity has gutted state power, leaving a void which cartels eagerly fill. Guayaquil, handling 70% of exports, is a sieve.
Over 600 kilos of cocaine linked to Noboa Trading S.A. were seized between 2020 and 2024, bound for Croatia and Italy, yet no one has been held accountable. This isn’t chaos; it’s a system, one where narco cash—billions in U.S. dollars—props up a fragile state too broke to print its own money.
To understand Ecuador’s crisis, we must first grasp the following: you can only buy drugs using cash.
Consequently, that cash is drained from the economic system into the underworld. It’s like trying to keep a bowl full when it has a hole; you need to find a way to plug it back into the system. Our economic and social systems depend on it, because to replace it, printing money would cause inflation and dilute the current supply at an alarming rate.
So the system needs that money back.
The parallels to Wachovia’s 2008 banking scandal are stark, because shutting the bank down risked economic collapse after “dark cash” ceased to flow back and caused a shortage. Ecuador’s austerity, imposed since dollarization in 2000, mirrors this: after years of deep cuts, powerless police and control agencies show a state crippled, not careless and an economic and political empire, also, “too big to fail”.
In his “war on gangs,” President Noboa has carefully avoided the Sinaloa, CJNG, and Balkan cartels. Is it possible he cut some kind of backroom deal to keep drugs and cash moving while he crushes dissent?
The 2023 assassination of the anti-corruption crusader and presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio by the cartel known as Los Lobos, clearly demonstrated the price of defying the cartels. Ecuador is now ruled by a narco-political order where cash trumps justice, and austerity ensures the state will not fight back.
Cartels exploit decades of cuts, making Ecuador a laundering hub, its dollarized veins pumping narco wealth into a global system that desperately needs it.
Andrés Durán, an Ecuadorian reporter exiled after exposing Noboa’s links, uncovered a state complicit in its own undoing.
OSCAR LEON: “Andrés, thanks for joining us.”
ANDRES DURAN: “Thank you, Oscar, thank you to The grayzone. I’m here to share what I’ve uncovered.”
OSCAR LEON: “Thank you, Andres. During the presidential debate, Luisa González grilled Daniel Noboa about his family’s company trafficking cocaine—not once, but multiple times.”
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LUISA GONZALES: …My question is clear—are you or are you not the owner of Noboa Trading, the company that exported cocaine-laced bananas in 2020, 2022, and 2024—while you were already president? Five prosecutors have been replaced, and still no answers.”
PRESIDENT DANIEL NOBOA: “No.”
DEBATE HOST: “Candidate Noboa, you have one minute to explain your answer.”
PRESIDENT DANIEL NOBOA: “No, I’m not the o
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