The fall of the narco-mayor

Toledo

Leonardo Toledo Torres was a criminal defense lawyer in Guayaquil. He had become known for defending Mayra Salazar in the Metástasis case: he was the one who designed her exit as a cooperating witness and negotiated with the Attorney General's Office. In recent months he had been defending Leonardo Cortázar, held in El Encuentro prison, and was preparing to hand a judge devices containing recordings that, according to Boscán & La Moni, linked many people to corruption and drug trafficking.

Toledo called Boscán & La Moni several times. The last time, it was because he felt they could break him, in those words. They never met in person. He asked them to record that conversation and keep it private. The next day he handed them four videos and two audio recordings. The instruction was that of a life insurance policy: keep them and, if something happened, pay attention to them. What he had on the Encuentro case he did not give them; he told them they would not be able to resist the temptation to publish it.

Boscán & La Moni stored the material without looking at it. They opened it on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, the day Toledo was killed. On the next day's show, Boscán explained why they had not reported it earlier: publishing it three weeks before could have hastened the decision to get rid of him. That morning they made the last conversation public. On Thursday the 29th they showed what was in the videos. It was the story of a mayor.

In the early hours of October 27, a sedan pulled up to a house in Sauces, in northern Guayaquil. At least five men got out wearing vests and jackets of the National Police and the Armed Forces, armed and carrying tools to break down doors. They staged a raid. Inside, they were not only looking for a person: they opened drawers. According to the reconstruction Boscán & La Moni laid out on their show, they were looking for something, perhaps a computer or a phone.

It was the wrong house. Toledo, convinced someone was coming for him, slept somewhere else and parked his car far from where he spent the night. Neighbors called the police. There was a predawn chase after the fake officers' red car: its occupants scattered, and one of them ended up cornered in a house and arrested.

At around nine in the morning, Toledo went out to get his car, unaware that it had been used as bait. At least one of the hitmen had stayed in the area waiting for him to come back for it. Toledo saw the gun, tried to take cover and fell in the middle of the street. The attacker fled. Police have not said who ordered the killing or why. The lawyer's phone was missing, and one hypothesis is that they were after what he was preparing to hand over to a judge in four weeks.

Cortázar was told the news in prison around noon. According to Boscán, he wept and asked for one thing only: that they not let him be killed.

Gustavo Santana Ortega was murdered on October 30, 2024, at a gas station in Naranjal, along with two other people, by a group of men armed with pistols and rifles who arrived in two pickup trucks. According to a police source quoted by Expreso, he had received threats and had a history linked to illicit activities. Boscán describes him as a man accused of drug trafficking, close to Los Choneros in the struggle for control of the canton.

His son took over the family's estates. A few months ago he went to Toledo with a land problem: the mayor's office had altered the cadastral record of a rural farm owned by the family and changed its registry entry without notifying him. Toledo told him that to prove what was happening in the municipality he needed a recording. Santana's son went to see Mayor Juan Carlos Rivera, sat down with him in a messy bedroom and left his phone recording in his pocket.

The mayor first tries to wash his hands of it: he says the farm paperwork went through the administration and was sent to the cadastral and legal departments. When Santana's son objects that it comes from him, Rivera replies that he is not in charge. He talks about officials who left because people wanted to kill them. Santana's son puts the surname on the table: the Ochoas. He tells him that as mayor he can call the ministry and report that the Ochoas are running everything, and that he himself will take him to the interior minister. The mayor answers that he cannot say anything.

Boscán said on air that he tried to reach Rivera at fifteen different cell phone numbers and that none answered. He made his own number public so the mayor could give his side of the story.

When the Ochoa surname came up, Boscán & La Moni turned to police sources and to their own notes. According to those sources, the Ochoas are a Naranjal family that presents itself as prosperous businesspeople and has an alliance with Los Lobos. Naranjal is a transit point for drugs and for gold from illegal mining. In 2023, when the canton was split in two, Santana senior sided with Los Choneros and the Ochoas with Los Lobos.

A police officer explained to them how they take over land: they show up at the farm with a contract transferring the property, put a pistol to the owner's head, and the owner signs. If he later tries to report that he was coerced, they show him his signature. That is how they allegedly became large landowners. It is the same ground Santana's son is fighting over: a cadastral record and a registry entry that changed without the owner knowing.

In the recording, Santana's son mentions two killings. One is that of a young IT worker at the municipality, murdered, he says, so he would not copy information: Franklin Osmani Torres Luna, who was shot at least six times at eight in the morning on March 9, 2026, in front of the church. The other is that of council member Diana Carnero, murdered in February 2024. According to Santana's son, the gun that killed Carnero is the same one that killed his father. None of these claims has been confirmed by the Attorney General's Office.

The recording also reveals the person recording. Santana's son presents himself as a millionaire, says he can pay for private security and, at one point, proposes that the mayor settle things with the Ochoas by paying them: offer them money and let them name the price. The mayor replies that he is not going to say that. Boscán summed up what matters in those ten minutes: a mayor admitting, in front of a third party, that the power in his municipality lies in other hands.

The recording aired on the morning of Thursday, October 29, 2026, in a week when the government had declared war on mayors linked to drug trafficking. The day before, police had arrested the mayor of Vinces, Juan Alfonso Montalván, for money laundering. Boscán warned that it was the first time he was showing a narco-mayor from the ruling party. Sergio Peña, an assembly member allied with ADN, said on the same show that he considered it extremely serious and that he would send the video to the authorities.

At 11:57 a.m. Boscán posted the full recording on X. Shortly after two in the afternoon, ADN released a statement: it was withdrawing its political support for the mayor and starting his expulsion. José Julio Neira shared it, calling for all the facts to be investigated.

Rivera responded with a video on his social media. He called it a dirty, filthy campaign, invited other authorities to visit the municipality to see for themselves that Juan Carlos Rivera is the one in charge and working there, and did not address the content of the recording.

Rivera took office as mayor in 2023 with the CREO movement and later moved closer to the ruling party. According to Radio Pichincha, which reviewed his sworn asset declarations, his net worth fell from $1,027,026 in 2023 to $159,185 in 2026, while his debts rose by $441,105.