Published: · Region: Latin America · Category: intelligence

Ecuador Police Seize About $120 Million in Cash Tied to ‘Los Choneros’, Interior Minister Says

Ecuador’s interior minister says National Police have found a hidden cash stash of roughly USD 120 million in Manabí province, money he says would belong to the organized crime group Los Choneros. The discovery hints at the volume of illicit funds circulating in the country’s underworld.

Ecuador’s security forces have turned up an enormous sum of hidden cash in the coastal province of Manabí, a discovery officials are linking to one of the country’s most notorious criminal organizations.

Interior Minister John Reimberg said the National Police seized a cache in Manabí containing approximately USD 120 million. He said the money would belong to the organized crime group Los Choneros. Authorities described the find as a “caleta,” a term widely used in the region for concealed storage sites used by trafficking networks to hide cash, drugs or weapons.

Officials have not released details on how the stash was located, what denominations or currencies were involved, or whether any suspects were arrested alongside the money. Nor have they provided public documentation to back up the alleged link to Los Choneros beyond the minister’s statement.

Even with those gaps, the figure alone underlines the scale of illicit finance moving through Ecuador. A single cache worth around USD 120 million rivals the annual budgets of smaller municipalities and gives a sense of how much liquidity major criminal groups can command outside the banking system.

Manabí has long been a strategic corridor for drug trafficking out of South America, which has contributed to violence, extortion and competition among criminal factions. A hidden treasury of this size suggests that, despite repeated crackdowns and states of emergency, powerful groups such as Los Choneros retain the ability to stockpile funds far beyond the reach of regular oversight.

For the government, publicizing the seizure offers a chance to show progress against organized crime’s financial backbone. But whether this marks a one-off success or the start of a more systematic push against the group’s assets will only become clear if investigators trace the money further, bring cases to court, and uncover similar caches elsewhere.

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