Ecuador's attorney general has cracked down on drug gangs. Then chaos broke out.

Just weeks before Ecuador descended into chaos, with prison riots, two escaped criminals and the brief siege of a television station, the country's top prosecutor launched a major operation aimed at rooting out narco-corruption at the highest levels of government.

The investigation, dubbed 'Caso Metastasis', led to raids across Ecuador and more than thirty arrests.

Among those charged were judges accused of giving favorable rulings to gang leaders, police officials who allegedly altered evidence and supplied weapons to prisons, and the former prison authority director himself, who was accused of giving special treatment to a powerful drug trafficker. .

They were involved through text chats and call logs retrieved from mobile phones belonging to the drug trafficker, who was killed while in captivity.

When Attorney General Diana Salazar announced the indictment last month, she said the investigation had revealed the spread of criminal groups through Ecuadorian institutions. She also warned of a possible “escalation of violence” in the coming days, saying the executive branch had been put on alert.

This week her prediction came true.

Interviews with security experts and intelligence sources reveal what might have sparked this week's violence in Ecuador, which was so intense it prompted the president, Daniel Noboa, to declare war on the gangs and declare a state of emergency.

According to the interviews, the attorney general's investigation played a crucial role.

“Metastasis is where everything begins,” said Mario Pazmiño, a retired colonel and former director of Ecuadorian military intelligence who is an independent analyst on security issues.

The raids put pressure on Mr. Noboa, who took office in November and had promised to crack down on gangs and clean up the prison system, to take concrete steps, Mr. Pazmiño said.

The president assured that big changes are coming. Although he did not say publicly what they were, officials said the changes included the transfer of several powerful gang leaders to a high-security facility known as La Roca, or The Rock, in Guayaquil, a major coastal city.

Gang leaders learned of the plan before the transfer could take place, but most likely through a government leak, officials said. And on Sunday, Adolfo Macías – who heads a gang called the Choneros and is widely considered the most powerful gang leader in Ecuador – went missing from his cell.

As inmates clashed with guards in prisons across the country, another gang leader, Fabricio Colón Pico, who heads Los Lobos, escaped from a prison near the city of Riobamba on Tuesday.

Experts said the gang leaders wanted to avoid La Roca because security would be tighter and they would likely lose access electronics such as mobile phones. The leaders also feared that they would be killed if they were placed with their rivals in La Roca.

“Every life of theirs would be in danger,” Mr. Pazmiño said. “That was the breaking point.”

In response to the planned transfer, experts say leaders likely ordered gang members – from prisons that serve as command centers – to fight back.

And so on Tuesday, Ecuadorians experienced violence the likes of which they had never seen in years — even as gang war has roiled the once peaceful country. In several prisons, prisoners took guards and staff hostage. One video on social media showed guards being detained at knife point.

In cities and towns, police officers were kidnapped, cars set on fire and explosives detonated.

Guayaquil saw the most violence, with gunmen not only storming the TC Televisión network's studio during a broadcast, but also storming several hospitals and opening fire near at least one school.

The chaos left at least 11 people dead, authorities said, most of them in Guayaquil, and took nearly 200 prison staff hostage.

The attorney general's revelations — and Mr. Noboa's subsequent plan to transfer gang leaders — had sparked intense anger.

“The Metastasis operation is like kicking a hornet's nest,” says Gustavo Flores-Macías, a professor of government and public policy at Cornell University who specializes in Latin America.

Before the operation, gang leaders seemed to have reached a state of “equilibrium,” he said, in which they felt they could operate their lucrative criminal gangs even from behind bars, with the cooperation of authorities.

“Let's say the gangs operate under a level of impunity, and let's say they're quite happy with it,” Mr. Flores-Macías said. “What Metastasis does is disrupt the existing balance, allowing them to continue to function normally. So there is a response in this criminal underworld, and it's taking the form of these quite violent, spectacular actions.”

Ms. Salazar's office responded that they were not granting interviews due to the ongoing security situation.

The violence unleashed by the gangs was met with violence. On Tuesday afternoon, Mr Noboa took the extraordinary step of declaring an internal armed conflict, unleashing the military on the country's 20 gangs.

On the first day after the declaration, authorities said police and armed forces had killed five people involved in the gang-related violence and arrested more than 850.

The U.S. State Department issued a statement Thursday saying U.S. law enforcement, military and government officials would visit Ecuador to support the fight against what the department called “appalling levels of violence and terrorism by narco-criminal elements.”

A person working in Ecuador's intelligence service, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Thursday that gang leaders appeared to have been punished by the fierce response to this week's violence and had ordered calm on the streets. prisons.

The two gang leaders, Mr. Macías and Mr. Colón, remained at large.

Mr. Colón, who was arrested a week before he escaped and accused Ms. Salazar of trying to kill her, posted a video on Thursday on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. Appearing in a parka and skullcap, he said he only escaped because he thought he would be killed had he remained in custody.

He told the president that he would turn himself in if his safety could be guaranteed. In a radio interview, Mr Noboa said he would not offer him such a deal.

Ms. Salazar, Ecuador's first black attorney general, was appointed in 2019. She prosecuted a former president, Rafael Correa, the following year on corruption charges and recommended an eight-year prison sentence, the maximum penalty, after he was convicted.

Her latest investigation began after the death of Leandro Norero, a gang leader, in 2022.

Mr. Norero was the founder of the Chone Killers and had become one of the country's most powerful drug lords and financiers by forging ties with Mexico's Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel, the attorney general said.

He was serving time for drug trafficking and money laundering when he was killed in a prison massacre.

At the time of his death, prison officials and experts say, he was trying to unite rival gangs into a cartel.

Ms. Salazar said he also rewarded judges, police officers, security guards and others who helped him and his associates with apartments, cars, cash and prostitutes.

Among those exposed by Mr. Norero's cellphone records was Pablo Ramírez, the former head of the prison authority, who is accused of giving Mr. Norero preferential treatment. Mr. Ramirez has denied having any contact with Mr. Norero.

Wilman Terán, head of the country's judicial council and a former magistrate in the country's highest court, was also charged. Mr. Terán, whose council oversees and disciplines judges and prosectors, has denied that he was part of Mr. Norero's vast network of favors. The council has backed him, calling Ms. Salazar's operation a smear campaign.

The day before the operation was carried out, lawmakers, believed to be sympathetic to former President Correa, announced a plan to investigate Ms Salazar, claiming she had been selective in the cases she handled.

Around the same time, Mr. Correa posted a message on the X platform warning of an impending operation, a message that Ms. Salazar later said tipped off a number of targeted officials who evaded capture during the raids.

“Narcopolitics has been exposed in Ecuador,” Ms. Salazar said as she announced the arrests.

During a hearing that lasted several hours, she described how drug traffickers invaded Ecuador's political system and prisons.

The transcripts of the cell phone evidence ran to 15,000 pages.

Genevieve Glatsky contributed reporting from Bogotá, Colombia; José María Leon Cabrera from Quito, Ecuador; And Thalie Ponce from Guayaquil, Ecuador.