Mayor of Ecuador's biggest city arrested for money laundering

Mayor Aquiles Alvarez was arrested by heavily armed police in a dawn raid.

Pictures released by the public prosecutor's office showed bags with bundles of cash, computers and mobile phones it said were found during this and other raids in which another 10 people were arrested.

Alvarez, 41, who has been mayor of Guayaquil since 2023, has emerged as one of the leading opponents of the right-wing, US-backed Noboa.

He has criticized Noboa's war on gangs, including his decision to send soldiers into the streets, and not ruled out running for president.

Guayaquil, a city of nearly three million people, is the nexus of Ecuador's ballooning drug trade.

Its port has become a major transit point for cocaine trafficked from neighboring Colombia and Peru en route to the United States and Europe.

Murder rates have soared, while car bombings, murders and prison massacres have become routine.

In an interview with AFP in October, Alvarez argued that "crime shouldn't be fought with more weapons, vests, helmets, and bullets, but rather with public policies focused on preventing violence."

In July of last year he was fitted with an electronic ankle monitor while being investigated in a separate case, for alleged fuel trafficking.

Alvarez denies all the allegations against him, arguing that they are an attempt to disqualify him from running for reelection as mayor next year.

"We know perfectly well that there is a purely political motive behind all of this," his lawyer Ramiro Garcia told reporters.

His brothers Xavier and Antonio Alvarez were among 10 other people arrested on Tuesday.

Antonio Alvarez is the president of Barcelona SC, the country's most popular football club, which played a friendly match this past weekend against Inter Miami, the team of Argentine star Lionel Messi.

Without mentioning his arrest, the club announced on X that it had appointed a stand-in president to guarantee continuity.

Supporters of the mayor, an evangelical Christian and father of three, demonstrated outside the police station where he was taken on Tuesday morning, chanting "Aquiles, friend, the people are with you."

One carried a banner reading: "Not another political prisoner.!"

He was later transferred to the capital Quito.