US prosecutors charge five Ecuadorians with cocaine hidden in tuna containers

Defendants include son of ex-President Abdalá Bucaram and a former lawmaker

Federal prosecutors charged five Ecuadorians on Thursday with trafficking tons of cocaine to the United States and Europe, in part by hiding the drug in containers carrying tuna, the U.S. attorney’s office in New York City announced.

The defendants include Jacobo Abdala Bucaram-Pulley, 48, the son of former Ecuadorian President Abdalá Bucaram, and Jaime Estrada Medranda, 41, who previously served in Ecuador’s National Assembly. Bucaram-Pulley was arrested in Ecuador this month, and Medranda was arrested while traveling in Panama, prosecutors said in a news release. Court records did not list attorneys for the two men or for the other three defendants: Jaime Estrada Bonilla, Geovanny Fernandez Menendez and William Jose Briones Lopez.

U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said the five 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.

“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.

Prosecutors say Medranda 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 in containers packed with legitimate goods, such as tuna.

Bucaram-Pulley 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, Abdalá Bucaram, was elected president of the South American nation in 1996 and was ousted by Congress less than six months later for “mental incapacity.” Abdalá Bucaram faced accusations of corruption and nepotism during his brief time in office.

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

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

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.