Villavicencio’s widow blasts Assembly report on assassination, names the ‘co-conspirators’

Verónica Sarauz, widow of assassinated presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, called the National Assembly report on the murder of her husband “malicious and negligent” for not naming the masterminds of the crime. In an interview on television station Ecuavisa, Sarauz said the report was a “cover-up” of a political crime involving elected officials working with criminals.

Verónica Sarauz, widow of assassinated presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio

“The report focuses on the hired killers, not on the real authors of the crime,” Sarauz says. “The murder of my husband was orchestrated months in advance by political actors who were interested in silencing his voice,” she said. “This was a political crime that was well-documented in evidence of the Metastasis case.”

She claimed that “corrupt politicians,” from the Citizens Revolution, Pachakutik and Social Christian parties were the “intellectual authors” of the crime. “I have no problem naming names,” Sarauz said.

“The criminals have all been identified by prosecutors,” she said, including former National Assemblymen Ronny Aleaga and Pablo Muentes, Aleaga’s friend and business associate Xavier Jordán, and former vice president Jorge Glas. She added she believes there were others, and that they worked “in concert” with criminal gang leaders to carry out the crime.

“These same people also planned and carried out the murders of the seven hitmen to keep them quiet,” Sarauz said.

She said that those who wrote the Assembly report had access to all the evidence collected in the Metastasis case, including cell phone transcripts where the crime was discussed. “The people who produced this report had a personal interest in suppressing the real story,” she said, “and, I believe, some of them were personally involved.”

“One thing I pledge,” Sarauz said at the close of the interview, “is that this case will not go unpunished. I will not go away and I will not shut up until justice is done.”