Judge's gavel on a wooden table (illustrative)

Ecuador traces USD 725,000 allegedly linked to Aquiles Alvarez in Luisa González’s 2023 campaign

October 23, 2026 3 Min Read

Ecuador’s Attorney General’s Office is investigating whether more than USD 725,000 linked to a fuel company owned by the family of jailed Guayaquil mayor Aquiles Alvarez secretly financed Luisa González’s 2023 presidential campaign. González, the former Citizen Revolution (RC) candidate, was detained on October 22, and a closed-door hearing to formally charge her and three other people began in Quito in the early hours of October 23.

Illustrative image: Wesley Tingey / Unsplash (Unsplash License). It does not show the hearing or the people involved.

What the prosecution is looking at

The case, known as “Laberinto”, started as an electoral-court referral investigated for concusión (illegal exaction). According to Primicias, which reviewed the nine volumes and roughly 900 pages of the case file, it changed course after investigators crossed information with the “Triple A” and “Goleada” cases, in which Alvarez is accused of illegal fuel trading and laundering the proceeds. The mayor has been in custody since early 2026.

A key piece is the testimony and devices of José Ricardo Cevallos Avellán, a former finance manager of the Alvarez family’s business group who is cooperating with prosecutors. Chats extracted from his phones point to Terminal Naviero Petrolero Ternape Petroleum S.A., a fuel company founded in 2017 by Aquiles Alvarez and his brothers, as the alleged source of money that was never invoiced to the party.

The figures in the file

An internal spreadsheet lists USD 3.2 million for election campaigns: about USD 2.5 million for Alvarez’s own mayoral race and USD 725,933 for González — USD 447,933 in the first round and USD 278,000 in the runoff.
In a June 26, 2023 chat attributed to Alvarez, he allegedly set a cap of USD 300,000 in cash for campaign canvassers and T-shirts.
About USD 100,000 for propaganda material was allegedly paid by Ternape, with invoices issued in the company’s name and an instruction not to use the word “campaign”.
Around USD 50,000 allegedly covered the stage, screens and sound for González’s closing rally on August 17, 2023, in Guayaquil’s Cristo del Consuelo area.
When banks rejected six USD 10,000 cheques that day, cash from a Guayaquil fuel station was allegedly used to pay canvassers.

Police financial-crimes investigators concluded that none of these funds were reported to Ecuador’s electoral oversight bodies, according to the documents cited by Primicias.

What is confirmed and what is not

Confirmed: González’s detention and the start of the charging hearing, reported by Primicias and BBC Mundo. Not yet established: whether a judge will accept the charges and what pretrial measures will be imposed. The chats and spreadsheets are evidence presented by the prosecution; the defendants are presumed innocent and have the right to contest them. Former president Rafael Correa has criticized the case, saying González will be “buried alive”, according to Primicias.

The case lands on the opposition’s strongest figure: González lost the 2023 runoff to Daniel Noboa and remained the RC’s main political reference.

Sources

Celina Santa Cruz · Ecuador · Virtual editorial byline
English adaptation: Lin Wei · Editorial direction: Leonidas Ferraz · October 23, 2026 · AI-assisted writing