Trump’s Man in Ecuador Fraudulently Wins Election in Ecuador – 2 Articles

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Daniel Noboa, Trump’s Man in Ecuador, Declares Victory Amid Election Fraud Charges

W.T. Whitney Jr.

Incumbent Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa of the National Democratic Action Party took 56% of the vote in the second round of elections taking place on April 13. With 95% of the votes counted, Luisa González, candidate of the social democratic Citizens’ Revolution Party, gained 44% of the vote.

González appeared to have been astonished at the results, and with good reason; the two candidates had been evenly matched until now. She exclaimed that, “Today, we do not recognize the results. I denounce before my people, before the media, and before the world, that Ecuador is living through a dictatorship, and we are confronting the most grotesque electoral fraud.”

Polling had shown the two candidates tied at 44% each. First-round voting on Feb. 9 had Noboa taking 44.2% of the vote and González, 43.9%─with Leónidas Iza, leader of the indigenous Pachakutik party, securing 5.29% of the vote. His second-round support for González appears to have been inconsequential.

Noboa took office following a second round of elections in October 2023 that gave him 52% of the vote and González 48%. He was completing the term of President Guillermo Lasso, a conservative former banker who had resigned because of bribery charges. Noboa will now serve until 2029, and he’s already targeting his rival for retribution.

González on April 11 denounced the Noboa government for replacing the military security team assigned to protect her, claiming that the action “puts my life at risk and that of my family.” Her charge is not without merit.

Presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated while campaigning in 2023. Since then, “more than 30 politicians, judicial authorities, and journalists have been killed,” according to one report.

On the day before the elections, Noboa decreed a “state of exception” in seven provinces, in sections of Quito and in prisons. The measure, referring to “internal armed conflict,” calls for curfews and mobilization of the police and military forces.

The election results cast doubt on the legitimacy of Ecuador’s democracy and portend troubles ahead for Ecuador’s already beleaguered majority population. Crime has reached record levels along with narcotrafficking, militarization, and aggressive U.S. intervention.

Adding to a bleak outlook is the dissolution of the progressive legacy of Rafael Correa’s presidency (2007-17) that gave rise to the Citizens’ Revolution movement and González’s candidacy.

Born in Miami, Daniel Noboa studied at three U.S. universities and benefits from family businesses worth $1.3 billion. His campaign featured “promises to stop the violence, finish with electric power backouts, and raise people’s purchasing power through neoliberal measures,” according to one report.

The BBC suggests that, “Noboa has tried to reposition himself, with a campaign centered on reinforcing his profile as a strong leader confronting the possible return of the left to Ecuadorian politics.”

A recent accounting places Ecuador’s most recent murder rate at 38.8 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, up from 6.45 per 100,000 in 2015, under Correa’s government. Seizures of illegal drugs in Ecuador, mainly cocaine, are also unprecedented─33% higher in 2024 than in 2023. Ecuador produces much cocaine, but is also a throughway for Colombian-produced illicit drugs on their way to Europe and the United States.

News surfaced during the campaign that authorities had seized cocaine from banana containers shipped to Europe by Noboa Trading Company. Lanfranco Holdings S.A., co-owned by President Noboa and his brother, claims 51% equity in the firm.

Meanwhile, the economy is also in downward spiral. Ecuador’s GDP is falling, and an ongoing energy crisis stemming from drought and deteriorating infrastructure is exacerbating the situation. Unemployment has increased, and the poverty rate presently is 28%. The Noboa government recently obtained a $4 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, but the public has seen little benefit.

Noboa was an honored guest at President Donald Trump’s inauguration in late January and is a close ally of the Trump administration in Latin America. Meeting with Trump in Florida on March 29, Noboa requested U.S. designation of irregular armed groups in Ecuador as terrorist organizations, which many see as a pretext for even closer cooperation between his military and that of the U.S.

Since 2024, the U.S. military has been preparing to deploy warships, weapons, and personnel to Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands, and plans are afoot for a new U.S. naval base at Manta. Correa had closed down the U.S. airbase there in 2009.

Noboa wants to make sure that cannot happen again; he’s seeking to modify Ecuador’s Correa-era Constitution so as to permit foreign military bases. But Noboa isn’t waiting around; agreements are already in place for the arrival in Ecuador of U.S. troops, possibly soon.

The debacle of this election highlights a contrast. On the one hand, there are the achievements of Correa’s presidency and the goals of González’s campaign. On the other, there is the record of Noboa’s government so far and of U.S. intervention.

Analyst Stansfield Smith, in a 2017 report, surveyed the accomplishments of the Correa’s government. They included: taxation of the rich; non-payment of illegitimate debt; steady and significant GDP growth; a doubling of Ecuador’s minimum wage; reduction of the poverty rate from 37.6% to 22% (rural poverty from 61% to 35%); construction of 31 new hospitals, either completed or in progress; and the addition of 34,000 new health workers.

Commentator Irene León, writing in La Jornada on April 12, summarized the goals articulated by the Citizens’ Revolution candidate. González “proposes an ethical pact to pacify the country, as well as to restore the democratic fabric and institutionality destroyed in recent years … [She] proposes a foreign policy characterized by the return to regional integration and multilateralism, the revitalization of the national economy and production, and the articulation of state policies around economic, geopolitical, social, cultural, and gender justice, among others.”

Just as Luisa González’s electoral defeat will surely discourage hopes for a revived Citizens’ Revolution movement, it will also encourage U.S. intervention. Analyst William Blum recalls that, prior to Correa’s government, U.S. agents had “infiltrated, often at the highest levels, almost all political organizations of significance, from the far left to the far right.”

Now with Noboa in charge, the old ways are back. For instance, the Noboa government and U.S.-based Erik Prince recently agreed that armed mercenaries hired by Prince’s Academi Company─formerly Blackwater─will soon be joining the “war on crime” in Ecuador.

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(W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, and lives in rural Maine. Courtesy: People’s World, a voice for progressive change and socialism in the United States. It provides news and analysis of, by, and for the labor and democratic movements.)

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Daniel Noboa’s Electoral Theft Will Cement Cartel and Corporate Control Over Ecuador

Oscar León

On April 13, 2025, Ecuador’s National Electoral Council proclaimed incumbent President Daniel Noboa the winner of the presidential runoff—a result that his challenger, the left-wing Luisa González, denounced as “massive fraud.”

If Noboa secures what appears to be an ill-gotten victory, he will be able to consolidate complete control over a state weakened by austerity and corrupted by deep infiltration by transnational drug cartels—a criminal network that is deeply enmeshed with his family’s business.

González, who led several polls by up to 6 points as of Friday, has demanded a vote-by-vote recount.

In doing so, she pointed to irregularities that included, but were not limited to:

• 18 polling stations in her strongholds being relocated at the last minute
• Bonuses paid in cash using IMF funds before the runoff.
• “False positives” of ballots that forced the closure of polling stations where she held a wide lead; the banning of several foreign observer groups.
• Martial law imposed in seven provinces favorable to González.
• The denial of voting rights to all Ecuadorians residing in Venezuela.
• Noboa’s illegal campaigning while in office, in defiance of court orders.

Andrés Arauz, a former presidential candidate and close ally of González, presented copies of altered ballots, showing irregularities and lacking the required validating signatures. These ballots were counted–and somehow always favored Noboa. This could explain why the use of cell phone cameras was prohibited in polling places. These strange events mirror earlier complaints of fraud, which were clearly documented with photos and videos from the first round.

Given Ecuador’s enormous mineral wealth, and the timing of the election outcome amid a global scramble for copper, oil, and rare earth metals, the country’s already fragile sovereignty now hangs in the balance.

Noboa plunges Ecuador into violence, cartel-tied corruption

Noboa’s victory reflects the dominance of an elite rooted abroad. Born in Miami, the sitting president is the scion of a family empire embedded in the system of global capitalism, and operating with complete impunity. As revealed in the Panama Papers, his family business includes Lanfranco Holdings, which was linked to three failed cocaine shipments to Europe. Noboa-owned companies owe $98 million in taxes to the country he now governs, and he has publicly stated that he doesn’t intend to pay.

Noboa’s tenure follows the neoliberal shift overseen by former presidents Lenín Moreno and Guillermo Lasso, who unleashed a wave of austerity on the country, hollowing out public services and state institutions while cooperating with Washington’s national security agenda—most notably on the surrender of Julian Assange to British authorities.

The weakening of the state, especially in marginalized areas, opened the door for cartel infiltration—from ports to power structures. Ecuadorian investigative journalists Andrés Durán and Anderson Boscán have methodically exposed links between the state and the cartels which transformed Ecuador into a hub for drug trafficking and money laundering, while plunging its society into violence. But the journalistic duo’s reporting soon forced them to flee into exile to save their own lives, highlighting the risk dissenters face in Noboa’s Ecuador.

The infiltration of the Ecuadorian state reshaped the cartels, transforming them from monolithic transnational syndicates into a loose federation of specialized franchises that coordinate trafficking, weapons, and money flows. These networks now dominate Ecuador’s fragmented, “balkanized” territory—with minimal state resistance.

The resulting atmosphere of violence and austerity keeps the population in a state of shock. To keep working class Ecuadorians from seeking an alternative among the nationalist left represented by González, they have invoked the boogeyman of socialist Venezuela as a cautionary tale, warning that any break from the neoliberal model imposed by Washington will lead to economic ruin.

While mainstream media paints Noboa as a politically “moderate” fighting cartel hitmen with a heavy hand, the facts on the ground are stark: 46 homicides per 100,000 people in 2023, 10,700 extortions in 2024–figures far worse than Venezuela under Maduro–and 220 tons of cocaine seized, most shipped from private ports, marking the rising trend of trafficking under his watch.

These ports are overseen by a customs intelligence unit with an annual budget of just $33,633, according to journalist Andrés Durán–against a drug trade worth millions, billions, or even trillions. As of July 2024, they had been disbursed just $5,677, or 17% of that sum, to battle perhaps the largest transnational criminal network in the world.

Noboa has targeted street gangs but left the cartels’ financial structures untouched. His anti-money laundering bill, submitted urgently to Congress, concealed provisions that had been previously rejected. Lawmakers argued the proposal did not provide effective tools to combat money laundering and would have introduced new tax burdens.

In Ecuador, military forces arrest and disappear children, such as the notorious case of the “Malvinas 4,” by exploiting the legal cover of a preventive presidential pardon. At the same time, corruption and drug trafficking cases are manipulated to protect insiders and secure their impunity.

The numbers tell the story: austerity feeds cartels, while social investment strengthens institutions and offers alternatives. The public investment once promised by Noboa during his first campaign never materialized. Since then, there has been only the “stick,” no “carrot,” and the situation has worsened—with 2024 and 2025 showing the worst security data in Ecuador’s history. In the run-up to this latest election, blackouts swept the country, and public services like healthcare and education were in shambles.

A corrupt, hollowed out system enables Noboa’s “victory”

Noboa has mobilized his support base against the return of a left-wing nationalist leader like former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. Despite a stronger, more functional state at that time, cases of corruption and repression of anti-mining indigenous activists fragmented and weakened the left. They’ve lost six consecutive presidential elections since then.

But this time was different. The toxic presence of the Miami-born Noboa and his corruption-stained, ruinous tenure has managed to unite left and right-wing factions against him, and in support of González. This means that the indigenous movement has converged with the Correista left after more than a decade of rancor, while even the right-wing military veteran and former presidential candidate Jan Topic, and right wing congresswoman Ana Galarza, have thrown their support behind González.

Just a week before election day, most of the polls showed González leading by up to 6 points and trending upwards.

Her surge followed a dominant debate performance in which she hammered the president over the documented ties between his family business and the cartels, and challenged him to take a drug test “right here, after the debate.” A visibly shaken Noboa ignored the challenge and changed the subject.

Polls (April 7—9, 2025, per El Universo):

• TresPuntoZero (Apr 7): González 52.87%, Noboa 47.13%
• MaLuk (Apr 7): González 53.47%, Noboa 46.53%
• Ideamos (Apr 7): González 52.14%, Noboa 47.86%
• Pedro Cango (Apr 9): González 52.1%, Noboa 47.9% (±2.8%)
• Tino Electoral (Apr 7): Noboa 53.74%, González 46.26%
• Cedatos (Apr 7): Noboa 61.08%, González 38.92%

Noboa’s alleged fraud was made possible by a fundamentally corrupted electoral system. Ecuador’s central election council, known as the CNE, is run by Diana Atamaint, whose brother Kar Atamaint was appointed by Noboa to a diplomatic position as Ecuador Consul in Queens, NY. Among the five electoral council members, four are government loyalists.

As pressure built for Atamaint to resign in November 2024, and with her term expiring, Noboa sent police to surround the CNE’s offices and prevent the new council members from taking office, extending Atamaint’s tenure by force.

Meanwhile, as The Grayzone has reported, Noboa’s public prosecutor, Diana Salazar, has selectively targeted political opponents while shielding Noboa’s associates–including banks tied to Lasso and Noboa–from money laundering probes.

In 2022, the U.S. signed a bilateral treaty with Ecuador allowing it to install unlimited military bases with full legal immunity for personnel. In the days before the 2025 election, anonymous intelligence officials from the Trump administration stated that they preferred Noboa over González because he had guaranteed them permanent military basing rights. Their declaration helps explain why Washington has so quick to recognize Noboa’s victory.

González’s recount demand challenges a powerful Miami-based elite which hovers far above local institutions, imposing its will on millions of Ecuadorians without their consent. Consider this: as a child, Álvaro Noboa–the current president’s father— studied alongside Winthrop Rockefeller and King Farouk II of Egypt at a private school in Switzerland. That’s the level of wealth and influence behind Daniel Noboa. Another example: Leonardo Campana, the president’s cousin and Leonel Messi’s teammate at the football club Inter Miami, is reportedly wealthier than Messi (or Ronaldo).

This is the context in which Daniel Noboa operates. He is not a man not beholden to interests. He and his family are the interests.

If Noboa is able to pull off the heist of the presidential election, he will cement total control over what’s left of the state, leaving Ecuador at the intersection of cartel infiltration, corporate exploitation, and U.S. geopolitical dominance. Noboa is a U.S. citizen. Like every American citizen, he has sworn to defend the U.S. above all other nations. His second term will enable him to make good on that oath.

(Courtesy: The Grayzone, an independent news website dedicated to original investigative journalism and analysis on politics and empire. It was founded and is edited by award-winning journalist and author Max Blumenthal.)