Landy Párraga, former Miss Universe candidate in Ecuador involved in a corruption case, dies – El Financiero

Former Miss Ecuador candidate Landy Párraga, who was mentioned in a case investigating an alleged plot of judicial, police and prison corruption, was murdered on Sunday while she was in a restaurant.

In a video circulating on social networks you can see the moment in which a subject enters the restaurant and repeatedly shoots Párraga, 23 years old.

Párraga’s name had been linked to the alleged drug trafficker and money launderer Leandro Norero and the ‘Metastasis’ case about an alleged network of corruption in favor of criminal structures evidenced after accessing the information contained in the cell phone of Norero, murdered in 2022 in the Latacunga city prison.

The former beauty queen was gunned down in the tropical province of Los Ríos, where she had gone for a social event.

What is the ‘Metastasis’ case, in which the model Landy Párraga is involved?

The ‘Metastasis’ case came to light at the end of 2023 with a large operation in which 39 people were arrested, including the then president of the Judiciary Council Wilman Terán, who is currently in provisional prison.

In the case, which has already involved more than fifty defendants, several conversations from seized cell phones were revealed in which Párraga’s name appears on several occasions.

On July 13, 2022, Norero was talking to Helive Angulo, alias ‘Estimado’, one of his trusted men. Norero was being investigated for money laundering and Angulo had infiltrators in the police team that was behind the case, noted the digital media Primicias.

‘Dear’ told Norero that the police had asked him about Landy Párraga and the inmate asked him that “for nothing in the world does the woman’s name have to appear (sic).”

According to ‘Estimado’, Párraga had an importer and the police had to check it at a request from the Prosecutor’s Office. Norero responded that that importer was not from Landy Párraga.

From the conversations it emerges that ‘El Patrón’, as Norero was called, insisted on avoiding being linked to him and preventing the name of the former Miss Ecuador candidate from reaching his wife’s ears.

According to the Ecuadorian Police, Norero was in charge from the Latacunga prison, in the Andean province of Cotopaxi, of financing and sponsoring Los Lobos, Los Tiguerones and the Chone Killers, among other criminal gangs that sought to displace the hegemony of Los Choneros. , the oldest and largest group operating in the country.

Also from the ‘Metastasis’ case is derived the ‘Purga’ case, where there are currently a dozen defendants for an alleged plot of judicial corruption within the Court of Justice of the coastal province of Guayas, which gave rulings favorable to the drug trafficker José Adolfo Macías Villamar (‘Fito’), the leader of the Choneros, whose escape from prison the authorities became aware of last January.

In the midst of a growing wave of violence while the authorities searched for ‘Fito’, the head of state, Daniel Noboa, declared last January the “internal armed conflict” against criminal gangs, which he began to call “terrorists.”