The fall of Mario Godoy

Everything that follows rests on one piece of evidence: the recordings in which the right-hand man of the president of the Judiciary Council asks an anti-corruption judge for 'a little more attention to the defense' of a Serbian drug trafficker. It wasn't someone's account or a hallway leak. It was a recording, and Andersson Boscán transcribed it and published it on December 22, 2025, on the first show he did outside La Posta. What it captured is that the Judiciary Council, the body that governs the justice system fighting organized crime, was applying pressure on behalf of drug trafficking. Sixty-four days after the first column on the case, the National Assembly censured and removed Mario Godoy with 148 votes and none against. To measure the weight of those recordings, you have to start eleven years earlier.

Eleven years ago, Ecuadorian police found a Serbian man with 153 kilos of cocaine, three sacks' worth of cement. His name is Jezdimir Srdan, he belongs to the Balkan mafia, a partner of the Albanian mafia in Ecuador, and he had already slipped through the Peruvian justice system twice: the first time because they had no one to translate. In Ecuador, a judge sentenced him in 2014 to 17 years in prison. He didn't serve them. On May 9, 2019, Judge Jorge Alexander Martínez Olivares applied a theory of his own: since the new law set the minimum sentence at 10 years rather than 17, he cut the sentence by 42 percent; since Srdan had been in prison for four years and three months, 43 percent, he signed off on 'extinction of the sentence by completion.' He served four years out of seventeen. In Ecuador nobody reported it; the Serbian press did, when it saw him operating again in Europe.

Judge Martínez Olivares was removed months later. Prosecutor Yanina Villagómez, of Guayas, issued a decision not to prosecute: she found no crime. In March 2023, through a personnel action signed by the acting provincial director for Guayas, María Fabiola Gallardo, he was reinstated as a judge at the North 2 Criminal Court Unit in Guayaquil. German police, meanwhile, had broken into Sky, the app used by the Albanians and many drug traffickers in Ecuador, and found Srdan: the man who once moved 153 kilos was now moving ten tons and had funneled nearly 11 million dollars into the Ecuadorian banking system. No one ever said which bank. The Germans applied pressure and Ecuador had to act: Srdan was arrested again and faced two cases, drug trafficking and money laundering.

The stage was already set. In June 2025, on Café la Posta, Boscán had begun putting faces to the judges who were freeing organized crime figures, and he interviewed the president of the Judiciary Council, Mario Godoy, on the same day news broke that alias Fede had escaped from the Penitenciaría prison dressed as a soldier. Godoy spoke of a 'false esprit de corps' among judges, of 93 officials sanctioned and 48 judges removed, of a judicial state of emergency, and denied persecuting Judge Nubia Vera, who had accused him of handing her the ruling in the Verónica Abad case on a USB drive. Vera had given three names on air: Mario Godoy, Henry Gaibor and Jorge Carrillo. Boscán memorized them.

Judge Carlos Serrano, of the Pichincha Anti-Corruption Unit, had a rough November. On the 6th, a bomb went off outside the offices of the anti-corruption judges; the news went largely unnoticed. Then the calls began. The caller was Henry Gaibor, Pichincha provincial director of the Judiciary Council and Godoy's right-hand man: if a judge gets a call from Gaibor or from Carrillo, he knows it's someone calling on behalf of the Judiciary Council's president. Gaibor wanted to talk. Serrano told him that if it was about a judicial matter, he didn't feel comfortable. 'It's nothing bad, it's something good,' 'it has to be in person.' The meeting took place on November 10, 2025, ten days before Jezdimir Srdan's hearing. Serrano recorded it. Boscán personally transcribed the recordings and published them on December 22, on the first show he did outside La Posta, with about 10,000 people watching live.

You had to go to the case file to understand what defense that was. Srdan had two cases. In the drug trafficking case, he admitted to being a narco. In the laundering case, his defense argued that the money in Ecuador was legitimate: a shrimp farm owned in partnership with his wife, 4.5 million dollars, 89 hectares. He was seeking acquittal so the seized assets would not be taken from him. Gaibor didn't say acquit him: he said to look at the defense's arguments, and the defense was asking for acquittal. When Serrano stopped answering, Gaibor used the judge's administrative supervisor, Sofía Carrillo, coordinator of the Anti-Corruption Unit, who was also recorded.

On November 20, the court ruled. Serrano and Judge Fierro voted to convict Srdan of money laundering; Judge Gabriela Lara voted to acquit him. On hearing the verdict, Srdan drew a finger across his throat in front of the judges, a gesture captured on the hearing's recording. Serrano reported the threat. The state's response was to take away the two police officers guarding him. The Judiciary Council later assigned him to the panel in the Triple A case against the mayor of Guayaquil, which was scheduled to sit on December 24 and which nobody wanted to take. Serrano resigned; Godoy would not accept his resignation until he put his decision in that case in writing. On December 17, Felipe Rodríguez, a lawyer and columnist for Primicias, published 'The brave stand alone' and reported that an anti-corruption judge was being pressured. On the Thursday before publication, Boscán told Godoy he had material, and they agreed on an interview for Monday the 22nd; on Sunday it was canceled. Before the show, Boscán wrote to Gaibor. The reply: 'There has been no pressure whatsoever from any point of view.'

The show ended with Godoy's wife. María Dolores Vintimilla, a criminal lawyer, married the president of the Judiciary Council in October 2024 and withdrew from all her cases a month later, including the criminal defense of Jezdimir Srdan, which Diego Chimbo took over. She kept receiving notifications from the case for almost a year; she said it was a mistake. Boscán checked the court system: she had also defended Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias Fito, and Jorge Luis Zambrano, alias Rasquiña, the leader of Los Choneros, not on drug trafficking charges, when she worked as an employee of a law firm. That same day the National Assembly, in a session called by Niels Olsen, voted unanimously to summon Godoy. Godoy had come to the Judiciary Council as the first choice on the shortlist submitted by the president of the National Court of Justice, José Suing, with votes from Noboa's and Correa's blocs on the Council for Citizen Participation.

On December 23, the full Judiciary Council met in the morning. It decided to refer the facts to the Attorney General's Office through a notitia criminis, which Boscán called the cowards' complaint, asked for Henry Gaibor's resignation and approved Godoy's leave so he could prepare his appearance before the Assembly. Council members Alfredo Cuadros, Fabián Fabara, Damián Larco and Magali Ruiz signed; they did not ask Godoy for a single explanation. Gaibor submitted his irrevocable resignation along with a statement about Pichincha's budget execution, which had gone from 30 to 98 percent. Godoy, at the council session, announced that he had information that 'is going to shake up a lot of things' and that he was not in Bogotá. That night he spoke with Fabricio Vela on Revelaciones.

Godoy also said the recordings were already part of a preliminary investigation by the Attorney General's Office and that he therefore could not talk about them. He never said whether he recognized Gaibor's voice, whether he sent him or who above him could have sent him. In January, on a radio show, he was asked whether he had spoken with his director: 'The only contact I had was immediately afterward, to find out. He told me about some situation he had to discuss with me in person.' Sources close to Gaibor told Boscán that he wanted to leave the country and was told to calm down, that this would blow over. Felipe Rodríguez, on Teleamazonas, summed up the political argument: a lawyer can defend drug traffickers, but someone with family ties to those defenses cannot run the body that governs the justice system fighting organized crime. That is called a conflict of interest.

The appearance came on January 5, 2026, three weeks later, because the Assembly decided to go on vacation first. Godoy waited three hours: assembly member Lucía Jaramillo, of ADN, changed the agenda of the special session to debate the capture of Nicolás Maduro. When he spoke, he said the president of the Judiciary Council does not appoint or remove judges, and then that they wanted to bring him down to leave cases unresolved. He named Pablo Encalada, Darwin Andrade, Gabriela Panchana, Katrina Tala, Diego Ordóñez, Lasso, Correa, Felipe Rodríguez and Boscán; he spoke of a messenger sent by Aquiles Álvarez who had supposedly warned him that the media storm would be 'unstoppable and unsustainable.' He did not spend ten minutes on Gaibor. Niels Olsen did not allow questions. Daniel Noboa had publicly advised him to resign.

Boscán answered him on air with the questions that went unanswered. If Gaibor said he was acting on someone's behalf, there were three possibilities: Gaibor made it up, in which case he should be in prison; Godoy, the only superior of the Pichincha director, sent him; or someone with more power than the president of the Judiciary Council sent him. The pressure on Judge Serrano was not in Srdan's drug trafficking case but in the laundering case, the same one in which Godoy acknowledged his wife had been the lawyer. The government, according to Boscán's sources, regarded Godoy as indefensible, but would not let him fall because his legal replacement, Alexandra Villacís, second on Suing's shortlist, was not to its liking: it wanted Damián Larco. Godoy had verbally offered his resignation on January 5, and the executive branch asked him to hold out through the impeachment trial to buy time.

On January 6, Boscán opened the show with a story he had waited weeks to publish. On Tuesday, October 22, 2025, in Orellana, at a red light, a hitman aimed at the head of Samantha Lozada, the Judiciary Council's provincial director there. The gun jammed, several times. He tried with her father, who was driving, and again the bullet didn't fire. When the light changed, he fired eight times at the car; no one died. Lozada had said in front of her colleagues, at a meeting of provincial directors with Godoy, that it was impossible to work with prosecutors and judges who served drug trafficking. Godoy asked her to send it to him in writing. On June 21, 2025, she sent to his personal email, and by WhatsApp to adviser Jorge Carrillo, four pages with names, ID numbers and case numbers: a prosecutor linked to Los Choneros, a prosecutor's assistant who lived with a hitman, a court clerk accused of selling constitutional rulings, a notary, and Judge Walter Pío Arriaga, who had annulled the case against alias Topo, the number two of Los Choneros. No one acted on it.

The threat against her came from alias Topo, through his brother: they handed her a phone in a restaurant and told her she would be killed that night, and if not, her family one by one, and that the prosecutor was going to help. She was moved from Orellana to Quito with a single police officer; the Interior Ministry asked the Judiciary Council for travel expenses and an armored car, and the Judiciary Council did not pay, arguing that the Comptroller General's Office would come after them. On October 21 she called the provincial prosecutor to ask why he had not appealed the annulment of a case against a notary tied to the narcos she had reported, and she notified the Transparency Directorate. The next day she was shot at. On October 30, eight days later, the full council accepted her resignation through resolution 85-2025, signed by Godoy, Magali Ruiz and Alfredo Cuadros: it was the pro forma resignation Godoy had requested from all provincial directors on September 24. No post, no protection. She left the country on January 1, 2026, granted asylum.

Godoy said on a radio show that he had taken 'all the administrative actions,' that there had been coordination with the Interior and Defense ministries, that he granted her remote work and that she came in to hand over her resignation in person. On the email, he said he had carried out a 'preliminary review' and that the prosecutor she reported was no longer in office. The Judiciary Council issued a statement: there were no official complaints before the Transparency Directorate, Godoy's supposed visit to Orellana was false and the resignation had been verbal. It sent Boscán a request for a correction. Boscán put the email and the chat with Carrillo on screen. Lozada, from asylum, said her mother had received word that they already knew which country she was in, and that she slept with a chair wedged against the door.

On January 27, 2026, Godoy was left alone. Seventy lawyers, former judges, former prosecutors and at least five bar associations sent a letter to the National Assembly asking it not to delay the trial: Ramiro Ávila Santamaría, Diego Ordóñez, Pablo Encalada, Silvia Buendía, Juan Pablo Albán, María Dolores Miño, Jorge Luis Mazón, María Josefa Coronel, among others who agree on almost nothing. The National Court of Justice removed José Suing from its presidency for having put Godoy on the shortlist. His successor, Marco Rodríguez, said on Teleamazonas that the principle of trust between the president of the Judiciary Council and the judicial branch had been broken, that he did not know Godoy and that he would not have put him on the shortlist. In Godoy's circle, administrative director Gallo, accused by a supplier of demanding a 14 percent kickback, and Roger Tumali, accused of harassment, were falling; all their resignations were accepted. On February 9, Fabricio Vela, who had interviewed him twice, told Boscán that the best thing would be for him to step aside, and that no one had answered whether Godoy's marital estate had benefited from the fees Srdan paid his wife.

On Wednesday, February 18, 2026, Mario Godoy resigned on Twitter half an hour before the session of his impeachment trial and did not show up to defend himself. The Assembly went ahead: the official bringing the impeachment, Viviana Veloz of Revolución Ciudadana, who as president of the legislature had sworn him in in 2024; the motion by Ana Belén Tapia, of ADN. The Legislative Administration Council had approved the trial, and the Oversight Committee processed it in three days and recommended proceeding. The vote: 149 present, 148 in favor, none against, one abstention, by Yajaira Urresta. Censured and removed for manifest ineffectiveness in the performance of his duties, Article 255, paragraph 3, of the Organic Code of the Judicial Branch. It required a qualified majority in an Assembly split down the middle; it got one. The vote map was painted green with a single blue dot. Damián Larco, a former executive branch official, took charge of the Judiciary Council; Alexandra Villacís, the alternate on the shortlist, was passed over.

Veloz asked for a round of applause for Judge Carlos Serrano; the ruling party did not applaud. Serrano wrote that morning that his story had come to light on December 17, 2025, in Felipe Rodríguez's column, with a question: are the brave still alone? Sixty-four days later, he was certain that judges who report pressure will no longer be alone. Samantha Lozada wrote from asylum that nothing gave her more peace than the truth and time putting everything in its place, and that they had been robbed not only of their careers but of the chance to be with their loved ones. Both remain outside the country. Henry Gaibor is in Ecuador. Godoy, who in June 2025 had said he would stay on 'until the last day,' left through the back door with a preliminary investigation open at the Attorney General's Office, based on the notitia criminis his own council had sent.

The post-Godoy Judiciary Council did not escape scrutiny. On May 12, 2026, Boscán reported, based on two sources present at the expanded testimony of Santiago Díaz, the former Correísta operative sentenced to 29 years for raping a minor, that Díaz had accused council member Magali Ruiz, who is close to Diana Salazar, before the Attorney General's Office of being one of the sources leaking confidential prosecutorial information to him and to Andrés Arauz; and that when he offered information to Wilson Toainga and to Ruiz in July 2025, he was transferred and held incommunicado. Ruiz had signed Godoy's leave and Lozada's dismissal. On September 3, 2026, in an interview with Boscán, Carlos Serrano described what meetings with senior Judiciary Council officials are like: there is a little basket at reception where you have to leave your phone before going in. 'Like the narcos,' Boscán told him. It was the first time, they agreed, that a judicial official had to be defended from outside the justice system.

The censure came from the recordings. Without that recording there would have been no impeachment trial: the Assembly voted 148 to zero on the material Boscán & La Moni published and transcribed on air, proof that the Judiciary Council was applying pressure on behalf of drug trafficking. The two officials who blew the whistle from inside, Judge Carlos Serrano and provincial director Samantha Lozada, remain outside the country. Henry Gaibor, the man who delivered the message, is still in Ecuador, with a preliminary investigation opened from the notitia criminis and without a single signed complaint from the council that let him go.