One of Ecuador’s most wanted drug traffickers, accused of having ties to Mexican drug cartels, was captured in the Colombian city of Pasto, near the border between the two countries, police in Quito said Thursday.
The capture of the accused drug trafficker of Ecuadorian nationality, identified as a high-ranking leader of the self-proclaimed Nueva Generación Ecuador cartel, took place on Wednesday after 18 months of investigation and coordinated actions between Colombia and Ecuador, Ecuadorian police said.
“Wilder SF is considered a high value criminal with international connections in Ecuador, Colombia and Europe,” police said in a statement.
The detainee is accused of coordinating the shipment of drugs to the United States through the main ports in Ecuador and Mexico in association with the Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación cartels, according to Ecuadorian authorities.
“He is one of the most wanted drug traffickers in the world,” Interior Minister Juan Zapata told reporters.
President Guillermo Lasso, a former conservative banker, says his priority is the fight against drug trafficking, which uses the Andean country as a transit point for drugs bound for the United States and Europe.
The majority of Ecuadorians rejected a referendum on Sunday, according to official data from the electoral court, proposed by Lasso to allow the extradition of Ecuadorians for organized crime offenses and other reforms.
“In the operation, the arrest warrant was executed for the purpose of extradition from the court of the Southern District of California in the United States, it appears that Colombia does have it and it will be placed under the orders of the United States justice,” Zapata explained.
The US Treasury Department sanctioned Wilder SF in February 2022, along with other Ecuadorian and Mexican drug traffickers, for contributing to the illegal activities of the Mexican cartel, the minister added.
In addition, the Ecuadorian authorities point to him as one of those responsible for the massacres that have occurred in recent years in the prisons of the South American nation.
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Source: VOA Español
