Ecuador arrests alleged leader of powerful Los Lobos drug gang

Ecuador has arrested an alleged leader of one the country’s most powerful drug-trafficking gangs, days after President Daniel Noboa took office promising to tackle a surging crime wave.

The leader of the feared Los Lobos organisation, known as Jaime Enrique SC, was captured by police on Sunday evening while driving in Puerto Bolívar, a port city and banana shipping hub has been hit by a wave of drug-related violence, said Ecuador’s national police. 

The high-profile arrest marks an early statement of intent by Noboa, the centre-right politician who took office last week promising a tough line on the powerful drug trafficking groups fuelling the country’s deepening security crisis. Los Lobos is reported to have links to one of Mexico’s leading criminal groups.

Jaime Enrique SC, whose full name was not given, was travelling in a luxury vehicle with a pistol and $13,500, police said, adding that he had a previous arrest warrant for illegal firearms possession. 

As the alleged gang leader was transferred to a nearby police station, gunmen believed to be loyal to Jamie Enrique SC, set up roadblocks and fired on police, injuring one officer. A firefight took place outside the police station later that night.

“These actions . . . ratify our commitment to combat organised crime,” police said.

The murder rate in Ecuador, once relatively peaceful compared with neighbouring Colombia and Peru, has jumped almost 500 per cent since 2016 and the country is still reeling from the brazen assassination of centre-right presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in August. That murder upended the campaign and fuelled support for Noboa, 35, who is not from the same centre-right party but was until then regarded as an outsider.

Noboa’s administration will last only 17 months because he will complete the term of previous conservative president Guillermo Lasso, who called a snap election amid an impeachment process against him. 

“I invite everyone to work together against the common enemies of violence and misery,” Noboa, the son of a banana magnate and five-time presidential also-ran Álvaro Noboa, said during his inauguration. “The job is hard and difficult and the days are few.”

On Saturday, Noboa repealed guidelines allowing people to carry small amounts of illegal drugs including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and amphetamines. His office said the measure “encouraged micro-trafficking”.

Los Lobos — “the Wolves” — has emerged as Ecuador’s most powerful drug trafficking gang after initially forming as a splinter group of the waning Los Choneros gang, according to InSight Crime, a platform that monitors Latin American criminal organisations. 

The group is estimated to have more than 8,000 members and operates on the streets and in prisons, where it has been involved in several massacres and riots, authorities have said. In November 2022, the group claimed to be in control of two wings at the Litoral prison in Guayaquil, the country’s largest jail.

A group of masked men claiming to be members of Los Lobos claimed responsibility for Villavicencio’s murder in a video message in August, though its veracity has been disputed.

Fernando Carrión, a security expert at the Flacso institute in Quito, said the leadership of Los Lobos was uncertain, with a violent power struggle or fragmentisation both possible in the wake of Jaime Enrique SC’s capture.

“Another possibility is that alliances are made with smaller groups that will make them stronger,” he added.

Press reports in Ecuador have said Los Lobos provides security services for Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), one of Latin America’s largest and deadliest organised criminal groups. The CJNG runs a portfolio of activities in Mexico from extortion to the smuggling of migrants and fentanyl.

Raúl Benítez Manaut, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said authorities in Ecuador believed the CJNG had been slowly gaining ground over the Sinaloa cartel, which has been in the crosshairs of Mexican and US authorities.

“In drug trafficking nothing is formal, they are all groups that slowly send emissaries to find gang members, heads of criminal groups . . . they seek each other out,” he said.

Additional reporting by Christine Murray in Mexico City