The Ecuadorian government extradited on Sunday, July 20, Adolfo Macías, aka “Fito”, the largest drug trafficking in Ecuators, arrested at the end of June after a year and a half of the race, announced the penitentiary authority.
The US Prosecutor’s Office accused in April “Fito” of cocaine and arms trafficking. John Durham, a prosecutor from a Brooklyn court, described him as “a ruthless leader and a prolific drug trafficker on behalf of a violent transnational criminal organization.”
The Baron of Drugs “left the Center for Liberty La Roca”, maintained by the Police and the soldiers, “as part of an extradition process,” said Penitentiary Authority (SNAI), in a message sent to journalists.
Escape in January 2024
From his cell in a high security prison, “Fito” had agreed last week to be extradited to the United States during a videoconference audience.
Therefore, he became the first Ecuadorian to be extradited by his own country from the reinforcement in the equator of this procedure by referendum in 2024, a measure defended by the Ecuadorian President Daniel Nnovera in his fight against organized crime.
“We send it with great pleasure to respond to US law,” said Daniel Nnovera during an interview with CNN.
“Fito” had escaped in January 2024 of the Guayaquil Penitentiary Center (southwest of Ecuador), where he had been serving since 2011 a 34 -year prison sentence for organized crime, drug trafficking and murder.
The head of one of the main gangs of the country, the choneros, who reigns in particular in cocaine traffic, “Fito” was associated with the murder in August 2023 of one of the main candidates for the Ecuadorian presidential elections, Fernando Villavicencio.
Former taxi driver, he had become the number one public enemy in Ecuador, the authorities designated him as a “criminal with extremely dangerous characteristics.”
His escape had caused a wave of unprecedented violence in the country, killing dozens of dead and generating riot in several prisons, street fights caused by gangs and a hostage, which he takes on a television.
Daniel Novoa then declared the country in “internal armed conflict” and deployed the army to try to neutralize the twenty criminal groups involved.
Due to their situation between Colombia and Peru, the largest producing countries in the world in cocaine, and their strategic ports in the Pacific, Ecuador has become in recent years the theater of violent clashes for the control of the territories destined for the delivery of cocaine to the United States and Europe.
The Choneros gang has links with the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, the Gulf clan in Colombia, the largest cocaine exporter in the world and Balcanic mafias, according to the Ecuadore Observatory of Organized Crime.
More than 70% of all cocaine produced in the world now transit through the ports of Ecuador. In 2024, the country entered a record of 294 tons of drugs, mainly cocaine.
Source: BFM TV
