US charges son of Ecuador's former president, 4 others with cocaine trafficking

Federal prosecutors have charged a son of Ecuador's former president, a former member of Ecuador's legislature and three other Ecuadorians with trafficking tons of cocaine to the United States and Europe in part by hiding it in containers carrying tuna, the U.S. attorney's office in New York City announced Thursday.

The five defendants played a “critical role” in turning Ecuador into a key transit point for the vast majority of cocaine sent to the U.S. and Europe, U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said.

“The charges announced today represent a coordinated effort to dismantle political corruption and narcotics trafficking that had wreaked havoc in Ecuador and plagued the country with increasing violence in recent years,” McDonald said in a statement.

Jacobo Abdala Bucaram-Pulley, the ex-president’s son, and Jaime Estrada Medranda, who previously served in Ecuador’s National Assembly, were arrested this month, the former in Ecuador and the latter while traveling in Panama, prosecutors said in a news release.

Court records did not list attorneys for them or the other three defendants: Jaime Estrada Bonilla; Geovanny Fernandez Menendez; and William Jose Briones Lopez.

Ecuador has struggled to contain drug violence as rival cartels partner with local gangs in a battle to control coastal ports and other routes used to smuggle cocaine. The country is wedged between Colombia and Peru, the world’s top cocaine-producing countries.

The Trump administration has reached agreements with Ecuador and other Latin American countries to carry out joint military operations against criminal groups even as it has maintained the right to unilaterally bomb vessels suspected of drug trafficking.

Prosecutors say Medranda, 41, and Bonilla, Medranda's 71-year-old father and a former mayor in Ecuador, used their seafood company to help drug traffickers smuggle large quantities of cocaine out of Ecuador using containers packed with legitimate goods, such as tuna.

Bucaram-Pulley, 48, was one of those traffickers and also served as an intermediary for shipments from other drug traffickers, according to a grand jury indictment. Bucaram-Pulley’s father is Abdalá Bucaram, who was elected president of the small South American nation in 1996 and ousted by Congress less than six months later for “mental incapacity.” He was accused of corruption and nepotism during his brief time in office.

Menendez, 53, and Lopez, 47, allegedly served as representatives for Medranda and his father.

All five are charged with conspiring to import cocaine, possessing machine guns and conspiring to possess machine guns.