Ecuador has announced plans to partner with Erik Prince – the founder of a notorious U.S. private defense contracting firm – to combat organized crime and fight illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the country.
“Organized crime has sown fear and has believed that it can operate with impunity. Their time is running out. International aid will begin in Ecuador,” Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa said on X. “In a meeting with [Erik Prince], founder of Blackwater, we have established a strategic alliance to strengthen our capabilities in the fight against narcoterrorism and the protection of our waters from illegal fishing. There is no truce. There is no going back. Let's move forward.”
The Ecuadorian National Aquaculture Chamber (CNA) has warned about the growing waves of crime affecting Ecuador, specifically their effects on the country’s USD 6 billion (EUR 5.5 billion) shrimp-farming sector.
Increasingly daring criminal groups have intensified their actions, including threats, extortion, and even carrying out attacks, the CNA said, which has led Ecuador’s shrimp industry to invest more than USD 80 million (EUR 73.4 million) annually in security measures, including the hiring of guards and implementing advanced video surveillance systems powered by artificial intelligence and satellite tracking technology.
To combat the issue nationally, Noboa has emphasized seeking external security assistance and support through “special forces abroad” that would arrive in the country to join the fight against organized crime.
As part of that strategy, Noboa recently met with Erik Prince, who founded U.S.-based private security firm Blackwater in 1997. The firm gained notoriety in 2007 when its employees killed 17 civilians in Iraq and injured 20 more.
After that event, dubbed the Nisour Square massacre, the company changed its name, and Prince sold his shares in the firm to a private fund.
According to news service Latin News, it is unclear if Prince would act simply as a consultant to Noboa or if he would lead a foreign security force to directly intervene in the country, similar to the way Blackwater operated under his oversight.
Regardless, the announcement from Noboa drew criticism.
In a response to Noboa’s post, former Commander-in-Chief of the Ecuadorian Army Luis Altamirano Junq decried the announcement, saying it was an affront to the armed services and national police that would only serve to worsen the situation.
“It's truly deplorable that, under the guise of ‘international cooperation,’ they are attempting to hire the services of an army of mercenaries. In the end, the announced ‘special forces’ were a dubious private company. Is this announcement another smokescreen?” he said. “Our Ecuador needs a security policy, not mercenaries. The flawed political conduct of ‘war,’ in the absence of a comprehensive vision, as well as the deficient allocation of resources, will only deepen chaos and despair.”
Regarding the chaos to which Junq refers, the country’s homicide rate sits at nearly 40 per 100,000 inhabitants per year. That figure is the highest in Latin America.
In the nation’s seafood industry, national police carried out nearly 1,600 controls and made 617 arrests affecting a total of 11 gangs in the shrimp-producing provinces of Guayas, Santa Elena, El Oro, Manabí, and Esmeraldas in just 40 days in 2024, according to the CNA’s recently published Safety Bulletin.
Among the total arrests, five people were arrested on a shrimp farm on Mondragon Island in the Gulf of Guayaquil during an operation that seized an arsenal of explosives, rifles, shotguns, and ammunition.
Another five members of the Los Choneros gang were arrested in an operation carried out by the national police and army. Those apprehended were accused of stealing firearms from a shrimp farm, which they then used in criminal activities such as extortion and illegal trafficking.
Elsewhere, four alleged members of the Los Tiguerones gang were arrested when Ecuador’s national police raided a shrimp farm in the Progreso parish in Guayaquil, which was used as a front to hide an arsenal of firearms and ammunition.
“At this moment, we are living an unconventional war – a war that affects our neighborhoods, our provinces, and the tranquility of Ecuadorians. But, it is our duty as patriots and as people, who seek a country of progress and democracy, to fight until the end,” Noboa said.
