New scandal in Ecuador: Daniel Noboa sees signs of narcopolitics in a firm that provided food to prisons

“We will never favor State suppliers that have links to organized crime,” Noboa said in a message posted on his X network account, in which he said he suspected that there are suppliers who “have been accustomed to the State financing them, let them pass, give them a hand.

His reference pointed to a company called Lafattoria SA that until recently provided food services in some prisons in the country for nine years.

“There are 171 million (dollars) that the food provider of the country’s prisons has accumulated since 2015. 171 million that, if the link to the illicit acts presented today in the complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office were proven, would have been used to finance to these criminal organizations,” said the president.

According to Noboa, the governments that preceded his “handed Ecuador over to these criminals (service provision companies allegedly linked to criminal mafias) for years, accustoming them to another type of policy.”

That is why “today they feel threatened and are determined to hinder the progress of this Government that, finally, calls them for what they are: narcopoliticians,” the president’s message concluded.

According to a statement from the Presidency of the Republic, the Legal and Public Integrity Secretariats of the Government sent “criminis news” to the Prosecutor’s Office, announcing some “alerts categorized as ‘secret’ by the Strategic Intelligence Center” that point to the company Lafattoria SA

The Noboa Government “will not accommodate any act that threatens public integrity, nor will it allow relations with alleged suppliers whose links suggest coexistence with organized crime,” the Presidency noted in its statement.

In addition, she said she was willing to collaborate with the investigations of the case and that, “unlike previous administrations, impunity has no place in this Government.”

“All monopolistic conduct will be investigated and brought to the attention of the competent authorities,” the source added.

Since the end of April, groups of prisoners’ families and non-governmental organizations reported that some prisons in Ecuador had been left without a food supplier after the new hiring had not been processed in a timely manner.

This led to relatives of inmates collecting food and making donations to prisons.

A judge ordered this Thursday that the Ministry of Economy and Finance disburse a budget item to cover Zone 1 food contracting processes as a priority, in three months and under the supervision of the Comptroller and Ombudsman’s Office, as reported in social networks the Regional Human Rights Advisory Foundation (Inredh).

The human rights organization also indicated that the magistrate ruled that the National Service for Comprehensive Attention to Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), the State penitentiary agency, must accept donations from family members.