Observatory demands Ecuador tackle organised crime financial networks
The OECO analysed 48 money-laundering cases between 2023 and 2025, with only eight resulting in convictions. It calls for targeting the economic dismantling of criminal structures.
Ecuador must strengthen pursuit of money laundering, according to OECO
The Ecuadorian Observatory of Organised Crime (OECO) urged the country's judicial system to direct criminal prosecution towards the economic dismantling of criminal networks, rather than limiting itself to punishing individuals. So reported infobae.com on the basis of a study published on Monday in Quito.
The analysis covered 48 judicial proceedings for money laundering registered between 2023 and 2025. Of that total, only eight concluded with convictions, which reached 38 people: twenty-eight natural persons and ten legal entities.
Of the twenty-eight natural persons convicted, twenty received sentences of between ten and thirteen years' imprisonment. All those sentenced were also ordered to forfeit assets worth a total of forty million dollars.
The OECO warned of a significant gap in investigations: in 54% of the files analysed—equivalent to twenty-six proceedings—it was not possible to identify the predicate offence of the illicit funds. Among the twenty-two cases in which that origin was determined, drug trafficking topped the list with eight proceedings, followed by corruption with five. The observatory notes that this data reflects "the penetration of organised crime into the public sector".
The study also detected that only in a small proportion of investigations were complex criminal structures identified, with companies and corporate networks linked to financial services, commerce, real-estate activities, shrimp farming and virtual assets.
"The lack of elements to identify beneficial owners and linked economic networks limits efforts to impose timely measures and sentences that directly attack complex criminal networks," the report states.
The OECO also recommended improving identification of the predicate offence and expanding investigations towards emerging economic sectors and sophisticated money-laundering mechanisms.
Another point of concern is the duration of proceedings: cases filed in 2023 recorded an average of five years elapsed since the facts, a figure that increased to six years in cases from 2024 and to seven in those from 2025.
Source: Google News EC — Crime