Carving up the hospitals

Daniel Mendoza was an assembly member for Manabí and chaired the Oversight Committee until the Attorney General's Office charged him, in May 2020, over the basic hospital in Pedernales: a project he himself had pushed after the 2016 earthquake and that was never built. According to prosecutors, he and a group of operators set up a structure to steer public contracting and pocket the money; part of it ended up in his political movement, Mejor. Jailed in the middle of the pandemic, Mendoza chose to cooperate. Among what he handed over was a diagram.

The chart placed government minister María Paula Romo at the center, surrounded by assembly members from Alianza País and independent blocs, and divided hospitals and slices of the public administration as political quotas. The Pedernales hospital for Mendoza. The Manabí traffic directorate, which according to him took in 2,500 dollars a day. The Manabí governorship for Tito Nilton. Each hospital was a vote in the National Assembly, where Lenín Moreno's government had no majority. On August 26, 2020, La Posta broadcast it on Café La Posta.

The chats came out with the diagram. Mendoza asks the minister for a post for a person he calls Karen. Romo replies in a few words: Done. Karen's in. In another message Mendoza suggests Tito Nilton for the Manabí governorship and sends his number and his résumé. Nilton became governor.

Annex

The reaction was immediate. On August 27, 2020, the National Assembly censured Mendoza with 123 votes and, in the same resolution, demanded that President Moreno remove Romo for having taken name suggestions from a person under investigation. Roberto Gómez, of CREO, came on Café La Posta that morning as one of the lawmakers bringing the impeachment. Romo acknowledged the chats, said they were not evidence and denied handing out hospitals, either directly, through Mendoza or in agreement with him. Mendoza's lawyer said the carve-up was the journalists' inference. Mendoza later said he never drew a diagram.

On October 22, 2020, Roberto Gómez and Amapola Naranjo filed, with 45 signatures, the fourth impeachment request against Romo, this time over the carve-up. Mendoza testified that the minister assured him Nilton would be appointed once the impeachment proceedings against her were shelved, and that go-betweens such as Fausto Holguín brokered quotas among legislators. Gómez also presented an audio recording about interference by a Romo relative at the Tulcán hospital. Romo appeared before the Assembly on October 31.

Her removal came by another route. On November 24, 2020, the full Assembly censured and removed her with 104 votes in the parallel impeachment trial over the expired tear gas used against protesters during the October 2019 national strike. She was the first government minister removed by the National Assembly in that term. The impeachment over the carve-up was left open and unresolved.

Mendoza paid for Pedernales. On November 9, 2020, he accepted a plea deal and was sentenced to four years and two months in prison for organized crime; his adviser Jean Carlos Benavides, former Secob director René Tamayo and two others received two years and ten months. In June 2021 judges rejected the appeals of Mendoza and seven other defendants. In November 2021 Benavides, Franklin Calderón and José Véliz received six more years for money laundering. Mendoza served his last fourteen months under a semi-open regime.

No one was prosecuted over the carve-up. The Attorney General's Office never opened a case file under that name, and the chart remained a document in an impeachment trial that the Assembly itself let die when it removed Romo for another reason. Karen and Tito Nilton did not respond. Romo left the government and returned to politics as a lawyer and commentator. In March 2024, when the Attorney General's Office made the Metástasis case public, she said she had been unfairly accused of what others were doing, stealing from hospitals, and that Andersson Boscán and La Posta led the attacks against her.

The minister was right about one thing: the hospital corruption of 2020 was much bigger than a diagram. Daniel Salcedo, the operator behind overpriced purchases at Social Security hospitals, tried to flee in a light aircraft in July 2020, was captured, and years later his phone gave rise to the Metástasis case. Mendoza's chart was the first time anyone had drawn the political machinery behind it.