Cnn
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Erik Prince, founder of the controversial security entrepreneur formerly known as Blackwater, joined Acting operations on Saturday in Guayaquil, one of the most violent cities in the equator, according to local officials.
The operations have seen 10 houses attacked and 40 detained people, said the Minister of the Interior of the Ecuador John Reimberg.
Since early this morning, the security block as well as the American Erik Prince, a security expert, and the defense ministers, Gian Carlo Loffredo and the Minister of the Interior, John Reimberg, have been deployed in territory in Guayaquil, in particular in the suburbs, the criminals attacking and describing strategies to strengthen the major actions of our law forces. Morning.
Prince also declared in a video published by the Ministry of Defense of the Ecuador That it was in the country “providing the police and the military tools and tactics to effectively fight against narcoco-waves”.
The goal, pursued Prince, is to “put the narcos on the heels of the back and make them really afraid of being captured”.
CNN contacted Prince to comment.
His visit to the South American nation comes for weeks after the Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa announced a “strategic alliance” with Prince Fighting organized crime.
The Ministry of Defense of the Ecuador described Prince’s participation on Saturday a “historic security chapter” for the nation.
The country’s Minister of Defense, Gian Carlo Loffredo, said Prince and his team are currently providing training and advice to equator security forces – but added that their extent of action could be extended. “They may not limit themselves to these actions,” said Loffredo.
Prince has been in the country for a few days and work is underway to develop a new plan to fight against the gangs of the equator, he also said.
CNN contacted the Ministry of Defense of the Ecuador for more information on the visit of Prince.
In recent years, Ecuador – which has been sandwiched between Colombia and Peru, the best cocaine producers – have found themselves in the drug trade and the violence that still follows it. Its efficient transport and export system was used by cartels to move and ship their goods abroad – cocaine bricks hidden in banana boxes and other goods which then head to the United States, Europe and the rest of the world.
Noboa has increasingly called foreign aid to fight criminal groups and even asked US President Donald Trump to designate local gangs as foreign terrorist organizations. The government of the equator is currently laying the basics so that the American forces arrive, according to the plans obtained by CNN.
Noboa’s efforts will however strongly depend on the presidential vote next week. He left to face the left candidate Luisa Gonzalez, who positioned himself as just as difficult for the crime but opposes the presence of any foreign force in the country.
In the same video published by the Ministry of Defense, Prince called on Ecuadorians to vote for Noboa, warning that, moreover, the equator risked “resembling Venezuela, a narco-state with a massive drug treatment with all the crime and the socialism and the despair that result from it.”
“I hope the equator chooses the law and the order and we are here to help fight against gangs and provide the tools to the government to restore law and order, peace and prosperity,” he added.