The Panama Papers in Ecuador: not even an earthquake could stop their reporting

The reporters uncovered a bribery scheme linked to the state oil company Petroecuador, fraud in the construction sector, the use of Panamanian companies by Ecuadorian politicians, among other findings.

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists - Emilia Díaz-Struck 26/04/2019

Photo: ICIJ

To celebrate the third anniversary of the Panama Papers we’re speaking with reporters from around the world about the investigation each week.

Three years ago, when the Panama Papers broke in Ecuador, the then president Rafael Correa revealed the Twitter accounts and pictures of all the Ecuadorian journalists who were part of the project, asking people to demand the 11.5 million files from them. The reporters uncovered a bribery scheme linked to the state oil company Petroecuador, fraud in the construction sector, the use of Panamanian companies by Ecuadorian politicians, among other findings. In the end, it was an earthquake that stopped the threats they were facing.

We spoke with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ member Monica Almeida, who was part of the Ecuadorian team about the lasting impact of the 2016 investigation:

What were the most relevant Panama Papers stories for Ecuador?

We had and still have stories. The Panama Papers are like a mine where we always find gold nuggets. In the oil sector, we uncovered a bribery scheme set up in the state firm Petroecuador, which is now also being investigated in the United States and Panama.

In the construction sector, we uncovered the forgery of technical studies to generate fake invoices worth tens of millions of dollars by foreign companies who had business with the Ecuadorian government.

We also found the then Ecuadorian Attorney General using a Panamanian company to hide the ownership of a disputed house in a gated community near Quito, plus the then Ecuadorian ambassador to Panama doing the same to hide property in Miami he hadn’t declared to authorities in Ecuador.

At the end of 2016, when the Lava Jato corruption investigation expanded through Latin America because of the Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht, we discovered that three of the seven companies related to bribes in Ecuador were registered by Mossack Fonseca.

We are currently using the data for another investigation on contractors. We’re still mining the Panama Papers.