Ecuador's ousted president finds a haven in Uribe's Colombia. Narco links ignored

By granting asylum to Gutiérrez, the administration of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has given protection to a political figure whose presidential campaign was connected to a convicted narco-trafficker. The connections between Gutiérrez’s 2002 presidential campaign and drug money were unearthed in late 2003 after Ecuadorian police arrested the leader of a drug-trafficking organization.

That development also underscored the association of Alfredo Palacio, Ecuador’s current president and Gutiérrez’s running mate in 2002, with the arrested trafficker.

According to information published in El Comercio, a Quito newspaper, on Oct. 23, 2003, Ecuadorian police officers received a report from the U.S. Forward Operating Location in Manta, the airbase that hosted U.S. intelligence activities in Ecuador. The report warned of the landing of a suspicious Mexican-registered business jet on an airstrip at Portoviejo, a 250-thousand-people city in Ecuador’s coastal Manabi province.

That night, according to local press reports, when Ecuadorian narcotics agents raided the airstrip they found the jet in the hangar of Aerofer, a company owned by César Fernández, a wealthy local businessman who served as the governor of Manabi Province during the 1990s. Inside the plane police found 400 kilos of cocaine.

According to Ecuadorian police, the business jet, a Hawker Siddeley 125, had made several trips to Mexico, where Fernández dealt with the Sinaloa Cartel.

That same night in Portoviejo police also raided FERMASA, a packing plant that belonged to Fernández. According to testimony given by a narcotics officer in the trial that followed, police found Fernández himself in the process of preparing a cocaine shipment. Fernández was one of several people arrested that night.   

A few days after Fernández’s arrest, Palacio, the then Vice-President of Ecuador, admitted that he was a friend of Fernández. Palacio also said that Fernández had been involved in Gutiérrez’s campaign.

In November 2003 the campaign manager for Gutiérrez’s bid in Manabi province said to a local TV station that Fernández was “part of some committee in some campaign bureau.”

Separately, Gutiérrez’s Minister of  Tourism, Hernán Plaza, said in a TV interview that he had used a small plane also owned by Fernández.

Upon hearing these news Gutiérrez’s first reaction was to deny that he had received any money from Fernández. “It’s possible that he helped or collaborated with someone but never with a cent to the campaign of Lucio Gutiérrez,” said at the time the then president, speaking in his usual third person style.       

In the midst of the scandal Gutiérrez received a much-needed show of support by the Bush administration. On Dec. 2, 2003, Otto Reich, who was President Bush’s special envoy for Latin America, made an unscheduled trip to Quito to endorse the embattled Gutiérrez.

In August 2004, after a 10-month investigation, a committee of the Ecuadorian Congress that looked into the matter concluded that Fernández did indeed participate in Gutiérrez’s campaign. Separately, a minority report presented by two deputies said that Fernández contributed financially to the campaign and that Gutiérrez had not adequately explained that contribution.

After being convicted of drug-trafficking and sentenced to 16 years Fernández was moved in November 2004 from the overcrowded and dilapidated Garcia Moreno prison in the old part of Quito to the newer and more comfortable Jail Number 4, a peculiar correctional center in that its inmates have included at different times a former president and the man who once ran one of the country’s largest banks. In justifying the move the warden quoted a report from the Police Intelligence Directorate that warned of a serious threat to Fernández’s life.