The U.S. has announced the unsealing of charges against, and the arrests of, five Ecuadorian nationals who allegedly conspired to import cocaine into the United States for more than a decade. 

The defendants include a former member of Ecuador’s National Assembly, a former Ecuadorian mayor and current mayoral candidate, the son of the former president of Ecuador, and other powerful narcotraffickers.

Authorities arrested Jaime Medranda and Jaime Bonilla around Monday, while they were travelling in Panama.

According to the allegations, Messrs Medranda and Bonilla have long partnered with some of the region’s largest and most violent drug traffickers to ship massive quantities of cocaine out of Ecuador to the U.S. and elsewhere.  

In Ecuador’s National Assembly, Mr Medranda represented a district in the province of Manabi. Mr Bonilla, Mr Medranda’s father, is the former mayor of Manta, is currently running for the same office, and previously served as president of the Port Authority of Manta. 

Messrs Medranda and Bonilla are also owners and executives of a major Manta-based seafood company and an Ecuadorian professional soccer club. For years, as alleged, the duo smuggled vast quantities of cocaine disguised within their seafood company’s shipments out of Ecuador in partnership with large-scale drug traffickers, including the leaders of violent drug trafficking and designated foreign terrorist organisations such as Los Choneros and Los Lobos. 

Many of the cocaine loads they conspired to export were sourced from paramilitary groups operating in the jungles of Colombia.

To minimise the risk to themselves, Messrs Medranda and Bonilla allegedly relied on trusted intermediaries to meet with drug traffickers, receive payments, and coordinate the logistics of receiving, packing, and smuggling cocaine out of Ecuador using containers packed with legitimate goods, such as tuna.  

For example, in or about 2026, the duo sent their representatives Geovanny Menendez and William Lopez to meet with Jacobo Bucaram-Pulley—an alleged Ecuadorian drug and firearms trafficker and the son of the former President of Ecuador—to negotiate the export of a purported two-ton load of cocaine from Ecuador to Mexico, for further shipment to the United States. 

In another example, in or about 2023, the seafood exporting company of Messrs Medranda and Bonilla was used to ship ton-quantity loads of cocaine out of Ecuadorian seaports.  

From one such shipment, on or about May 27, 2023, the Ecuadorian National Police seized approximately 1,444 kilogrammes of cocaine inside the company’s shipping container at the Port of Guayaquil. 

Messrs Bucaram-Pulley, Menendez and Lopez were arrested around Wednesday in Ecuador.