The godmother and the narco-generals

The word came from the U.S. ambassador. In December 2021, Michael Fitzpatrick said in an interview that Ecuador had narco-generals and that visas would be revoked. Five days later, four generals lost their American visas. On December 20, on Café la Posta, Andersson Boscán summed it up this way: that drug trafficking had reached the top of the police was something there was no proof of, but also no doubt about; now there was the certainty the embassy provided. That weekend, journalist Paúl Romero of Ecuavisa had pulled the generals' asset declarations from the Comptroller General's Office website. Boscán put them on screen: Commander General Tannya Varela, 872,000 dollars in assets and a debt of 440,000; General Ramiro Ortega, 631,000; General Vargas, of Intelligence, 625,000; General Villegas, 585,000; General Fausto Salinas, 1,136,141 dollars. He did the math of adding up twenty years of salaries on the police pay scale without spending a cent, and it didn't add up. Mauricio Alarcón, of Fundación Ciudadanía y Desarrollo, asked the embassy to release the names, as it had in Central America, and the Comptroller's Office to cross-check those declarations against the financial system.

The final guest was Felipe Rodríguez, a criminal defense lawyer, who introduced himself as Varela's attorney in the criminal case for falsifying information in a public document. What was at stake was the generals' internal war. In July 2021, the commander, together with Government Minister César Monge, had rated four generals who then left the institution: Víctor Araus, Correa, Terán and Rodríguez. Araus accused her of inventing the evaluation meeting; a criminal guarantees judge, acting in a constitutional capacity, ordered them reinstated. Rodríguez said the meeting took place over WhatsApp, that he would request a forensic examination of Varela's phone, that the embassy had unofficially warned the government and the commander of suspicions about those four generals, and that the assets belonged to the marital estate she shared with her husband, General Noguera. He said Lasso had taken Varela to a meeting in Cartagena as a vote of confidence. Boscán replied that the complicated part was that every week more names of generals without visas came out. On February 23, 2022, Fitzpatrick again: the police, prosecutors and judges had the information in their hands and needed to prepare their reports properly. On the show, Germán Rodas, of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, spoke of negligence.

Four years later, the story of the narco-generals would take on another reading, told on the same show. In December 2025, Ricardo Vanegas, a former assembly member from the Anti-Corruption Parliamentary Front, said that the report the ambassador relied on when he first spoke of narco-generals had been written personally by Varela, based on a recorded conversation between Araus and Rubén Cherres in which the general promoted himself as the next commander, and that it served to clear out of the way the four who stood ahead of her husband in the line of promotion. Lasso sent them home; Noguera was promoted. Boscán added that in unpublished conversations there is an order to spread the claim that Araus has ties to drug trafficking, that the report is handed to the embassy and that the embassy takes the bait. Time, he said, proved Araus right.

León de Troya began in May 2021. An alert on May 21 put police on the trail of Rubén Cherres Fayoni and an Albanian man. With court orders, a team led by Lieutenant Colonel José Luis Erazo intercepted more than ten thousand calls: it found narco-planes landing in Ecuador, confirmed drug shipments to Europe and the United States, meetings in Manta and in a building in Samborondón, and Cherres talking with government politicians and with Danilo Carrera, the president's brother-in-law, who lobbied for posts and promotions. The final report runs 145 pages. It was shelved in early 2022 and declared confidential. In late 2022 it reached Boscán and Velásquez, who were then living in a hotel room with their daughters because their security team had detected a threat at their home. On February 13, 2023, Boscán appeared before the Assembly's Oversight Committee with El Gran Informe (The Great Report): the financing of Lasso's campaign with 1.5 million dollars in face masks and medical supplies, Agriculture Minister Bernardo Manzano handing his résumé to the operators, Carrera brokering posts in front of the president. And he said who had shut down the investigation.

There were three names. Giovanni Ponce, anti-narcotics director, whom former minister Patricio Carrillo had declared the best anti-narcotics general in history. Mauro Vargas, director of Intelligence, who received a briefing on the case; Boscán said he had a copy. And Commander General Tannya Varela, who on July 7, 2021, at 13:40, entered Carondelet Palace with Lieutenant Colonel Erazo without signing the log at the main entrance, according to military intelligence, authorized by then-Colonel Ponce, who was in charge of communications. The government responded the same day with a statement: the report had been shelved by decision of the Attorney General's Office and validated by a judge because it lacked merit. The next day, Lasso devoted a national broadcast to it: the abuse is publishing a confidential report while omitting that it was dismissed by prosecutors and shelved by court order almost a year ago. Government Minister Henry Cucalón came on the show and repeated that the reasons for shelving and reopening were a matter for the Attorney General's Office. Security Secretary Diego Ordóñez said there was not enough evidence.

La Posta showed the document that contradicted the government. Dated December 21, 2021, seventeen days before the formal closure, Lieutenant Cristian Moya signed a letter asking the prosecutor, if feasible, to close the preliminary investigation because the citizens allegedly belonging to the organization were out of the country and no incriminating evidence had been obtained. It was false, and the police do not ask to close cases they themselves are investigating. A week after the hearing, Fernando Villavicencio, from the Anti-Corruption Parliamentary Front, confirmed with a document signed by Ponce that Erazo's team had been dismantled, and asked the Attorney General's Office to investigate why the commander and the anti-narcotics chief disbanded a unit investigating one of the largest trafficking cases to Europe, working with Europol, British police and the DEA. The Attorney General's Office reopened the investigation. Ponce and Vargas did not appear before the Assembly: the police issued a statement, signed by Commander Fausto Salinas, saying its members are not subject to political oversight and that the institution had not ordered the closure.

On February 22, 2023, on El Punto Final, Boscán gave them a name: while the threat reports talked about the Albanian mafia, he wanted to look at the most dangerous mafia, the generals' mafia. Vargas, he said, instead of warning whether drug trafficking was contaminating the police, was campaigning with trolls and persuading Minister Ordóñez to replace the Armed Forces high command. Ponce, fired by Lasso on national television after the murder of María Belén Bernal at the Police Academy, remained a general and had been rewarded with the directorship of airports. Interior Minister Juan Zapata had asked from day one for them to be removed; the president did not do it. Why do the generals want information, he concluded: not to do their jobs, but to keep the politicians in their grip.

On March 14, 2023, one month and one day after El Gran Informe, La Posta aired the voices. A police source had handed over the recordings less than three weeks after Boscán called Varela to ask her, in an off-the-record conversation, whether she knew about León de Troya, whether she had gone to Carondelet in July 2021 and whether she had ordered Mauro Vargas to close a drug trafficking investigation. She said no to everything and swore on her son. Mónica Velásquez told her she was lying. In the first recording, Giovanni Ponce talks with Mauro Vargas in front of the investigative team, their subordinates: how many cases have we not investigated and uncovered, and precisely this one, where the president is involved, we're putting our whole heart into. Vargas: yes, yes, we have to close it; we should close it because tomorrow it's going to hurt the president. In the second, the plan: open another preliminary investigation, for money laundering, only against the Albanians, and tell the prosecutor that neither the Danilo part nor the president part is in it anymore. Boscán explained why that is serious: only the Attorney General's Office, which holds the power to prosecute, decides which investigation is opened or closed, and the two generals were handling preliminary investigations at will to protect the president's circle and, as a consequence, the mafia.

Then, the commander. In one recording, Varela confirms that Vargas is the one who orders the case closed. In another, she talks about the campaign money the report documented: the face masks had a way out, because for it to count as a campaign contribution, where are the papers; anyone can say they put five million into face masks, and how do you prove it's income. Velásquez put it this way: the woman who was supposed to be the head of the police investigation was there acting as the president's lawyer. The last recording is the one that changed the case. Varela says she is convinced the president knows, that if they want to tone it down they should tone it down, that the president called her to the Presidency and told her Danilo won't talk anymore, that it's over, that Guillermo Jr. isn't stupid, and that she was at ease. To the investigative team, that meant someone in Carondelet had tipped off the brother-in-law about a confidential drug trafficking investigation. Days later, according to the team, the entire structure changed phone numbers, traffickers included. The question Boscán put on air was direct: Mr. President, did you tell Danilo; Mr. Carrera, did you warn the traffickers.

That morning, Varela had sent Boscán a message reaffirming that she had nothing to do with it and did not know about the case. Neither she nor the police command answered the show's questions; Communications Secretary Andrés Seminario blocked the number. Boscán confronted Commander Fausto Salinas for staking his reputation on the statement defending Vargas and Ponce, issued the same day three police officers who had investigated the case received death threats, and said the investigators had been sent to the most dangerous places in the country. He named Diego Ordóñez as responsible for Ponce remaining in the police after being fired on national television: a president whose order is not carried out the next day is a puppet. And he described the government as held hostage by a mafia of generals who used what they knew to keep it in their grip.

The fall came within 24 hours. On March 15, Café la Posta opened with the news: Lasso had ordered Ponce and Vargas placed on leave, and both requested their discharge, confirmed by Salinas. Boscán confirmed that the Attorney General's Office was investigating Varela, Vargas and Ponce, after Correa's movement requested the investigation. The government issued a statement denying it had sought the shelving of the case, announcing the dismissals and asking the Attorney General's Office to investigate Danilo Carrera, who in a few weeks had gone from irreproachable man to a brother-in-law under investigation. Cucalón said these were two officers talking and that only a prosecutor and a judge can shelve a case; Boscán replied that there is a difference between giving an opinion and giving an order, and that a general who tells his subordinates the case has to be closed is giving an order. Leonidas Iza tweeted that Lasso was being propped up by the narco-generals. Virgilio Saquicela, president of the Assembly, spoke of an impeachment trial. Salinas said that once the discharges were filed, the police had nothing to investigate internally. General Juan Carlos Barragán, a former anti-narcotics director, responded to Ponce's defense, which cited 221 tons seized: the fight is not interdiction but dismantling structures, and intelligence should have warned the president when an operator with a record was circling fifty blocks from Carondelet.

That same day, Diego Ordóñez admitted on Teleamazonas that the president knew about the first phase of León de Troya. Boscán then re-created the scene for Lasso, who according to his ministers watched the show every morning: Varela entered his office on July 7, 2021, at 13:40 and introduced Erazo; Erazo showed him the link diagrams and the conversations between his brother-in-law and the structure; Lasso asked how they knew it was his brother-in-law, they told him they had the number, he took out his cell phone and, as they dictated it, said: yes, yes, that's my brother-in-law's phone. He pointed to a photo and asked who it was: Juan Carlos Reina, son of the founder of Banco de Guayaquil, whose involvement included comments about slipping packages of cocaine into shipments. Lasso had told the foreign press he didn't know even 10 percent of it. One month and two days after the hearing, the government accepted that the president knew on July 7, 2021.

On February 19, 2024, with Lasso out of power, the mainstream press published as a scoop that a police officer known as the godmother was in charge of providing protection to the drug trafficking organization linked to the Albanian mafia, according to the León de Troya report, and that the officer was Tannya Varela. Boscán and Velásquez went back over what they had published a year earlier: the visit to Carondelet, the recordings, the generals' exit, the influence-peddling investigation. And they recounted what the wiretaps said about her. In the transcripts the team reviewed, the mobsters and Cherres talk about the woman general: the general has warned us. The only woman general in the police at the time was Varela. There is a moment in the timeline, backed by documents, when the team reports the tapped numbers to its superiors, including the commander; the next day, every target of the investigation changes phones. Varela issued a statement in her defense that day; she had gone a year without responding to the show's invitation. Danilo Carrera was watching from his home, under arrest.

The nickname didn't come from her colleagues. It came from the crooks, the traffickers, especially those linked to the Albanians, because a godmother is the one who looks after you, who protects you. In December 2025, Boscán recounted how he met her: the first woman to make general, well connected, easy to reach, close to the presidential family, known for cozying up to politicians; she went from carrying Pierina Correa's shopping bags to running errands for César Monge. His sources in organized crime, Albanians but also Mexicans from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, already called her the godmother; there were always attempts, without evidence, to link her and her husband, General Noguera, to that cartel. Her only documented exposure to a drug trafficking structure is León de Troya. Fernando Villavicencio named her on the Assembly floor without saying her surname: alias the godmother, linked to Jalisco New Generation, Sinaloa and the Albanians. In the Parliamentary Front's report, according to Vanegas, she appears with her name and photo. And on Villavicencio's phone, on October 17, 2022, the operator Claudia Garzón wrote to him about Norero's death: Los Lobos were moving with a woman who had been a police commander.

On the afternoon of December 18, 2025, four years after the July 7, 2021, meeting, Tannya Varela was placed in provisional detention while awaiting charges from the Attorney General's Office and a judge's decision on whether she could remain free during the case. Arrested with her were Colonel José Luis Erazo and officer Rodney Rengel, the two police officers who had investigated León de Troya; Rengel had been pushed out of the police. Boscán opened the December 19 show with a confession: I believed Tannya Varela once. He told the audience about the December 2022 call, the oath on her son and Velásquez's words, she's lying to you, she's lying to you, and explained what the Attorney General's Office had in its hands: the only person who can identify who gave the verbal order, in an office in Quito and in front of witnesses, for a prosecutor in Manabí to close a drug trafficking scheme that flooded Europe with cocaine. That order doesn't give itself; someone has to say the words.

The case file, 162 volumes long, combines two cases. When Diana Salazar reopened León de Troya in 2023, what she investigated was not the drug trafficking but which of the investigators had shared the information with the press and with the Parliamentary Front. Because investigating only the investigators would have been indefensible, the Attorney General's Office merged that case with the influence-peddling case against Vargas, Ponce and Varela, opened after the March 14, 2023, recordings. Boscán said that on the day of publication Salazar called him, scandalized, and told him there was no crime, and that he mentioned influence peddling; she asked for the Penal Code (COIP), and the offense fit. The case passed through the hands of prosecutors Yanina Villagómez; Soria, because of the Quito Provincial Court jurisdiction the former commander's rank requires; Wilson Toainga as attorney general; and the acting prosecutor in 2025. Ricardo Vanegas, who filed the complaint against Danilo Carrera and presented the Front's report with Villavicencio in March 2023, said Carrera is in custody and convicted, that three more generals remain, that the penalty for the crime Varela can be charged with is one to three years, and that Erazo was being treated as a guinea pig: he had done what he was supposed to do. On the meeting with Lasso, he said the police had no business informing the president about a confidential investigation in which his brother-in-law had a conflict of interest, and that the one who did the informing was Varela. On the shelving, he said that not only prosecutor Balda but also the judge who validated it should be investigated, because if someone influenced one of them, someone influenced the other.

What the case left behind: two generals out of the police with lifetime pensions, a former commander under arrest, two investigators arrested with her, and an investigation that was never about who trafficked drugs or who benefited the traffickers, but about who talked. Verónica Sarauz, Villavicencio's widow, does not rule out that León de Troya is connected to his assassination; Vanegas agrees. La Posta said it on February 13, 2023, with names, and proved it with recordings a month later. As Boscán said in signing off: more information on the godmother is coming; many godchildren must be scared.