The United States Department of the Treasury announced this Thursday, June 6, the sanctions against the organized crime group Los Lobos.
A person with a Los Lobos tattoo in Guayaquil, on January 27, 2024.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned the criminal gang Los Lobos and its top leader, Wilmer Geovanny Chavarría Barre, alias ‘Pipo’.
The Treasury Department applied the sanction this Thursday, June 6, according to a statement posted on its website, as it did before with José Adolfo Macías, alias ‘Fito’, and Los Choneros, the rival gang of Los Lobos.
“With thousands of members, Los Lobos has become the largest drug trafficking organization in Ecuador and contributes significantly to the violence that plagues the country,” details the government institution.
President Daniel Noboa highlighted the support of the United States in the fight against terrorism. In a publication on his social networks, he insisted that “for years the terrorists have been used to doing whatever they want, today the story is different. Today they have a government that confronts them, and allies continue to join in this fight “.
“This is a long-term war, one that we will win.”
Daniel Noboa
What implications do the sanctions have?
The statement from the Treasury Department details that all properties and interests in properties of Los Lobos and alias ‘Pipo’, which are in the United States or in the possession of American persons, have been blocked since June 6.
Any entity that is owned, directly or indirectly, individually or jointly, by the criminal group and its leader is also blocked.
U.S. citizens may face civil or criminal penalties for violating those provisions.
Who is alias ‘Pipo’?
Wilmer Chavarría Barré, known by the aliases ‘Pipo’ or ‘Tuerto’ , had a rapid rise in the criminal world. He was imprisoned between 2011 and 2018, in the prisons of Cuenca and Guayaquil, for murder and kidnapping.
At the end of October 2018, suspiciously, a judge granted ‘Pipo’ the benefit of pre-release.
In 2021, ‘Pipo”s relatives recorded his death due to a supposed heart attack, due to Covid-19, but the Police have doubts that this death was real.
Several intelligence reports indicated that the leader Los Lobos is alive and operating from outside the country. This is also confirmed by Mayra Salazar’s chats, revealed by the Prosecutor’s Office in 2024.
