Progen's hidden
evidence

Hi, we are in Houston, United States, today, September 19, 2024. That is how the video begins. It is not an anonymous leak or a last-minute discovery: it is evidence the Ecuadorian state had been holding, with a signed and dated delivery record, since September 24, 2025, and that did not appear in the Progen case file. Three nervous men introduce themselves to a phone camera in a room at the Thompson Hotel: Nelson Castro, Celso Sánchez and Paul Flores. They are not drug traffickers or gang members. They are CELEC employees, the bottom of the pyramid, the technical commission the Ecuadorian state sent to verify what it was about to buy from Progen. One of them had no visa; the state got him one. They are recording to leave a record for their families, they say, because at six in the evening they have a final meeting with the company, and what happens to them depends on that meeting. They open the window to show where they are. That video sat for months in the hands of the Attorney General's Office, and nobody had seen it until Mónica Velásquez was contacted by the source and Andersson Boscán put it on air on May 19, 2026, watermarked and uncut. What was published that day was not a journalistic revelation: it was evidence that had already been handed over and that someone had left out of the case.

The backdrop is the worst blackout crisis in recent history. Progen Industries LLC, based in Florida, first appeared in December 2023 with proposals to the thermal power unit that went nowhere. On May 16, 2024, a month after taking over as acting energy minister, Roberto Luque traveled to Tampa with his adviser Peter Dreger and with Fabián Calero, CELEC's acting general manager, and visited a company that was not yet called Progen but HIS Industry LLC. He recorded a video saying he was there to verify and vouch for the proposal. Two months later, CELEC's technical commission signed the qualification record, and on August 2, 2024, the contracts were signed: 99 million for Salitral and 49 million for Quevedo, 50 generators in all, 29 for Guayaquil and 21 for Quevedo. Calero, who had been delegated to sign, in turn delegated to Byron Orozco, manager of Termopichincha. Luque says he did not sign. Antonio Gonçalves, minister between July 2 and October 9, 2024, says he never visited Progen and that the process was already underway when he arrived. Calero says he did not sign either. It is, in Boscán's words, the first contract in history that signed itself.

The technicians inspected equipment at two sites, Apollo Electric and a General Electric facility. At the entrance, their phones were taken away for security reasons. Businessman José Manrique, the face of Progen in Ecuador, handed them a camera to record whatever they wanted. They took photos. The camera came back to Ecuador almost empty: two or three were left. Carla Saud, Progen's representative for Latin America and majority partner in Astrobrixa, the company that received the payments, welcomed them with T-shirts, caps and gift boxes. Inside was a cell phone. They handed it to the Attorney General's Office unopened. On the second visit nobody took their phones, and they took pictures in secret: old diesel engines piled up among pipes and cardboard boxes, electrical cabinets with peeling paint and rusted hinges, equipment sitting outdoors in a shed with bathrooms. Ninety percent of what they were supposed to inspect was already wrapped in plastic. They believed it was scrapped equipment, hastily repainted. Without their sign-off, the state could not release the money.

That same September 2024, Paul Flores filed a complaint with the Attorney General's Office: a stranger had left a flyer at his wife's café in Conocoto. We have you located, engineer Flores, you and your family, we are going to kill you over the CELEC contracts. The Attorney General's Office placed him in its victim and witness protection program. In Houston they traveled with armed security. What they had to deliver was a report that Progen wanted to review on site. The Comptroller General's Office, which did not learn of the contract during its first year, later put the losses at 100 million dollars. Salitral does not operate. Quevedo does not operate. Someone decided that Progen should receive about 70% up front, and the payments were made under the administration of Inés Manzano. On May 14 and 15, 2026, the Attorney General's Office charged 21 people with embezzlement. Among them were Castro, Sánchez and Flores.

On May 20, 2026, Boscán & La Moni aired what follows the video: the audio the technicians recorded on hidden phones when they spoke with their bosses. The first is from September 20, 2024, the day after the hotel. The commission asks to meet with Carlos Villacís, CELEC's deputy manager. They tell him their phones were taken, that the camera came back without photos, that what they saw is not equipment with zero hours of use, and that they are afraid. One of them says his family works at the Comptroller General's Office and that they are going to be audited over this. They want a report that says what they saw. Villacís proposes something else: that they base their judgment on the review by the private inspection firm, AP Inspections, which had already recommended going ahead, and on a general inspection, number of units and little more. The technicians reply that they traveled all that way to look at a piece of paper that could have been emailed to them.

Villacís insists there is nothing behind it, that he is just following orders, and that when you want to do things, you have to do them right. The technicians tell him they are even afraid to travel and ask him to do whatever it takes, legally, to clear them. Taking advantage of the boss not being there, they say, they confess they are afraid. The boss is Byron Orozco, manager of Termopichincha, the CELEC business unit that hired Progen. Orozco had traveled to Houston with the commission and made them take a selfie as proof they had traveled together. He introduced himself to the commission by saying he had very good political connections, according to the show's sources.

The second recording is from April 2, 2025. The scandal has already broken and the money has already been paid. Orozco gathers the commission at the Electroguayas head office in Guayaquil and orders the phones collected. Pepito, collect the phones, you can hear. One of the technicians kept recording. There's no turning back now, he tells them. Either you let yourselves be helped or you defend yourselves on your own. He gives them five minutes to think. He wants them to sign, by hand, an addendum to the report already in the case file stating that all 29 units were inspected, that they were wrapped in clear plastic, and that the nameplates and technical specifications could be checked. The technicians had seen six. Orozco wants to leave a defense open: that what they saw in the warehouse was fine and that what arrived in Ecuador was different. He coaches them on how to talk about the contract administrator, Marlon Casillas: you don't pin it on Marlon and Marlon doesn't pin it on you. If in doubt, better to keep quiet. With Carlos and with Gabi, he says, we'll be watching the groups so we can step in if they put you on the ropes. That's what we did in Quevedo. We keep answering as CELEC, headquarters included.

Orozco was charged with embezzlement on May 14, 2026. Villacís is on the list of 21. The Attorney General's Office accuses the three technicians as principals in embezzlement for having signed a report. What it does not say is that they signed it under death threats, that they reported the threats in time, in 2024, and that they hold the evidence. Nobody asked the commission on whose orders it signed or who threatened it. Nobody asked Orozco or Villacís about these recordings. For Boscán there is only one reading: the Progen theft was not just the work of a few con artists who played the state for fools; there was a chain of command that pressured the bottom of the pyramid to legitimize it. And the Attorney General's Office was seeking prison for the bottom.

Prosecutor Luzmila Lluglla Gavilanes received the material on September 24, 2025, at 12:16, in Quito: the hotel video, the audio recordings, phones, emails and complete communications. All of it was logged into the chain of custody. Boscán showed the document on air in case the prosecutor's memory failed her. Lluglla had been assigned to push the investigation forward by a memo dated July 22, 2025, signed by Magali Ruiz, the Attorney General's Office's general legal counsel coordinator and now its representative to the Judiciary Council. She is the same prosecutor who, in the Encuentro case, the one that started out as the Gran Padrino case, signed the opinion that left one of the suspects out of the proceedings. People close to her office confirmed to the show that there were working interviews with at least one of the technicians and promises to his defense that the information would be used and that they would not be prosecuted.

None of that happened. Eight months later, with 21 people already charged, the video and the audio were not in the case file. On the night of May 19, 2026, after the first broadcast, the Attorney General's Office issued a statement on the criminal proceeding it calls Apagón ("Blackout"): the evidence supporting the charges is identified in the case file and, in that context, it clarified that the videos circulating on social media are not currently part of the prosecution case file nor do they constitute evidence formally entered into the proceedings. That was the confirmation. Attorney General Leonardo Alarcón's team assured Boscán that Lluglla had not notified him of the material's existence and that Alarcón found out by watching the show. Alarcón was acting attorney general and was competing in the selection process to stay in the post for six years.

That same May 19, another document leaked from Lluglla's office: the memo in which she recuses herself from the case because she found someone with National Court jurisdictional privilege, Energy Minister Roberto Luque, and must send the case file up to the attorney general, the only one who litigates before that court. When the case reached the top, Luque's name was not there. The only person of ministerial rank charged is Antonio Gonçalves, whose defense argues he was dragged in so there would be a convicted minister other than Luque. Gonçalves points at Luque. Luque points at those who signed. And the list of 21 has absences that Boscán named one by one on air: Marlon Casillas, the contract administrator; Rommel Calderón, administrator of Salitral; José Manrique, Progen's representative in Ecuador; Progen's CEO, Manning, who hosted the Ecuadorian delegation and remains in the United States, sued in Florida but not prosecuted in Ecuador. There are a whole lot of people who are not at the dance, Boscán said. Let's invite them to dance.

On May 22, 2026, Boscán went through the role of each person implicated, one by one. Roberto Luque, acting energy minister from April 16, 2024, declared the emergency, took part in drafting the technical specifications and terms of reference, traveled to Tampa and recorded the video that haunts him. His defense is that he did not sign and that he visited several suppliers, and he has not explained who chose the suppliers or who invited Progen. Peter Dreger, his adviser, traveled with him; the Comptroller General's Office found evidence against him and the Attorney General's Office did not include him. José Manuel de Oliveira, the ministry's legal adviser and Luque's delegate to validate the contracts, was not included either, despite the Comptroller's findings: in a 150-million contract there was no guarantee to enforce. Inés Manzano, environment minister and later acting energy minister, was not involved in the pre-contract phase, but the payments were ordered during her tenure, despite reports saying they should not be made. She has not been charged, and she is the one who sued Progen in the United States.

Fabián Calero, CELEC's acting general manager at the time of the award, traveled to Tampa, delegated the signature to Orozco because he was afraid to sign and, after the disaster, was promoted: Manzano took him on as deputy minister. He wanted to cooperate with the Attorney General's Office and then backed out. He has recordings, as does Orozco, who keeps one in which he reports that Progen should not be paid, and in the end it is paid anyway. José Manrique, a partner in Astrobrixa, is the first known point where the money landed; he held meetings at the ministry and bought a house in Samborondón after trying to get the seller to sign a confidentiality agreement. He has not been charged. Carla Saud, the majority partner, has. For Boscán the case is as simple as two plus two: squeeze Calero and Orozco, sit Manrique and Saud down, and follow the money.

In early June 2026, Calero's defense leaked a voice note from Inés Manzano to Ecuavisa. In it, the minister tells her then deputy minister that the summons to the National Assembly is not oversight but a piece of theater coordinated with ruling-party assembly member Diana Jácome so the issue would not blow up, and asks him to tell her what he would like to testify. Manzano did not deny it was her voice. Jácome said in the Assembly that there is no audio or text from her, that it is a conversation between third parties, that she is neither chair nor member of the Oversight Committee, and that she had received threats, for which she blamed the Citizen Revolution party. Boscán replied that nobody is accusing her of stealing but of pretending to exercise oversight, and that if Manzano is lying, Jácome should sue her. Assembly member Blasco Luna, of RC, said on the June 6 show that on July 2, 2025, Calero appeared before the committee, that he confronted him and that Jácome cut off his microphone, suspended the session and took Calero to her office; and that twice they requested the appearance of Luque, Manzano, Gonçalves and Félix Wong, and Jácome did not allow it. Luna and Lenin Barreto, who filed the first complaint with the Attorney General's Office in 2024, are pushing the impeachment trial against Manzano, which the Legislative Administration Council has already admitted.

The revelation had an effect the same day. The Attorney General's Office had to acknowledge in writing that the evidence was not in the case file. The attorney general learned from the show that his subordinate had had it since September 2025. Prosecutor Luzmila Lluglla was removed from the Progen case. The investigation, however, remains unchanged: 21 charged with embezzlement, the three commission technicians among them, and without Manrique, without Progen's CEO, without Casillas, without Luque, without Manzano. Nobody has answered who threatened the commission or who gave the directive that the contract could not fall through.

Meanwhile, the new energy minister announced that he wants to unblock the court case so the Progen generators can be put into operation. Blasco Luna estimates that this power would cost between 20 and 25 cents per kilowatt-hour. Progen has not returned a single dollar. Ecuador has not managed to freeze its money in the United States. What remains of the Progen case is above all this: the evidence existed, it had been handed over, signed and receipted, and it had to be taken out of the prosecutor's office for the country to learn that it existed.