Ecuadorian Presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio’s assassination earlier this month, for which six Colombian citizens are being charged, comes in the context of rising violence against political figures in the country. He was serving as president of the Political Control and Oversight Committee of the Assembly at the time of his murder.
The case of Villavicencio is interesting, given his background as an investigative journalist who uncovered cases of corruption in Ecuador under Rafael Correa’s Presidency, in which context he spent time in jail as well as in exile in Peru.
In particular, it is worth highlighting some of what Villavicencio denounced concerning his country’s financing of European political parties.
The journalist-turned-politician had filed charges at the Ecuadorian public prosecutor’s office to the effect that the country had made illegal €2.6 million payments to Spain’s leftist Podemos party. The money was paid out through an intermediary entity called Kinema between 2013 and 2016 and consisted of eleven contracts for legal advice on preventing Ecuadorian citizens living in Spain from being evicted from their residences.
The charges themselves are for embezzlement.
The case was actually raised by VOX over a year ago when the party denounced the issue before Spain’s Prosecutor’s Office, but it concerned payments made in 2013 only and was dismissed.
Presently, Irene Montero, Minister of Equality and mother to the children of Podemos’ founder Pablo Iglesias, is under investigation by Ecuador.
