“The country must be prepared”: who is Diana Salazar, the prosecutor who anticipated the wave of drug violence in Ecuador

It’s not a fortune teller, but Attorney General Diana Salazar anticipated it weeks earlier one of the worst drug attacks in Ecuador. “The country must be prepared”, he announced after having removed the most sensitive fibers of the mafias and their tentacles in power.

“The response to this operation will definitely be an escalation of violence,” the 42-year-old woman continued without hesitation on December 14.

He had just revealed the Metastasis research, described as the cornerstone of “narcopolitics” in Ecuador: There is a “deep structural decomposition that is spreading across the country. A system consumed by the cancer of corruption”, he added.

Judges, politicians, prosecutors, police officers, a former director of the prison authority and many other members of high levels of power have been accused of facilitating criminal organizations in exchange for money, gold, prostitutes, apartments and luxury goods.

With an iron fist, the first black woman to reach the head of the Prosecutor’s Office revealed the conspiracy after examining 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 a few public appearances she wears a bulletproof vest and is protected by a robust security system: “I say it with my first and last name. Now come and kill me”, she said defiantly during a hearing, when she asked for arrest of eight new subjects involved.

Criminal rampage and wave of terror

On January 7, Salazar’s prediction came true. Over the course of a week, drug traffickers have put the Ecuadorian state under attack with hundreds of hostages in prisons, attacks with explosives, armed attacks on the press and shootings, in a wave of violence that caused around twenty deaths.

When the situation seemed under control, the 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 assassinated this Wednesday in Guayaquil.

“Faced with the assassination of our colleague César Suárez (…) I will be firm: organized crime groups, criminals, terrorists will not stop our commitment to Ecuadorian society”, declared Salazar in X.

Accusation of Rafael Correa

Salazar was born in June 1981 in Ibarra, in the northern Andes and known as the White City, with approximately 160,000 inhabitants. According to what he told the local media, his mother, a psychologist, raised four children alone.

He studied Political Science, has a doctorate in Law and several diplomas in human rights and protection of people of African origin. In 2011 he became local prosecutor.

It reached number one in 2019 and a year later prosecuted popular former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) for corruption. and recommended a maximum sentence of eight years. Convicted and in exile in Belgium, he occasionally launches attacks: “Diana Salazar is so clumsy that she proves it herself,” the former president wrote on the X network on January 8.

“My scale of values ​​does not include contact, threats or dialogue with convicted or fugitive people,” the prosecutor responded.

Salazar had just called Correa’s then vice president, Jorge Glas, to give his version in the investigation into embezzlement in public works contracted after the 2016 earthquake.

Glas then took refuge in the Mexican embassy in Quito and the court ordered his precautionary custody, at the request of the public prosecutor.

Salazar’s detractors criticize him for attacking Correa and not pursuing other relevant investigations.

But others defend her: “I would describe her as a courageous, talented and determined woman,” Gustavo Medina, a former attorney general, told AFP, an organization that acts as the state’s lawyer.

emblematic cases

Elected for a six-year term and through meritorious contests, Salazar accumulates emblematic cases of corruption.

Among the most important investigations is the so-called FIFA Gate, which ended with the former president of the Ecuadorian Football Federation, Luis Chiriboga, being sentenced to 10 years in prison for money laundering.

He had his eyes set too the conspiracy of the Brazilian company Odebrecht for paying bribes, for which Glas was sentenced to six years in prison in 2017.

Salazar has been nicknamed the Loretta Lynch of Ecuador, due to her resemblance to the US attorney general who also uncovered corruption dens and was the first black woman take up that position in his 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 across South America”.

Although she has been criticized for her close proximity to the Americans, Ecuador’s first female prosecutor, Mariana Yépez (1999-2005), believes that many of the accusations have to do with machismo.

Salazar reported racism and death threats against her and her daughter.

Source: AFP