Ecuador and the United States signed an agreement on Wednesday that formalized the opening of the first office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the Andean country. Its objective will be to support the fight against international organized crime groups.
«This is an alliance that will allow us to more effectively confront transnational organized crime networks,» said Ecuador's Minister of the Interior, John Reimberg, during the event, held in the capital Quito.
In addition to the office opening, a new police unit was created that will allow both countries to improve their joint capacity to «identify, dismantle, and bring to justice those who traffic drugs, launder money, smuggle weapons, and finance terrorism,» according to information provided by the U.S. Embassy in Ecuador.
The U.S. diplomatic mission added that the agreement creates a «framework for sharing information, coordinating operations, developing capabilities, and conducting parallel investigations against foreign and transnational terrorist organizations».
Minister Reimberg assured after signing the agreement that the FBI's work with the Ecuadorian Police will begin «immediately,» as there has already been «training and preparation» beforehand.
At the signing of the memorandum, which was not open to the press, Ecuador's Vice President, María José Pinto, and the Chargé d'Affaires of the U.S. embassy, Lawrence Petroni, were also present. Petroni described the event as a «very important milestone» in cooperation between the two countries.
The diplomat recalled that FBI teams have previously collaborated with Ecuadorian security forces, such as when they arrived in the country after the 2023 assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio and in 2025, when a car bomb exploded outside offices belonging to President Daniel Noboa's family in Guayaquil.
The United States has become a key partner for Ecuador in the «war» that President Noboa declared at the beginning of 2024 against criminal gangs, which he labeled «terrorists» for being the cause of the country's worst violence crisis in history. This has led Ecuador to head Latin America's homicide rate.
This agreement adds to the joint military operations that both countries launched last week on Ecuadorian soil against «terrorist» organizations, in which they bombed and destroyed a training camp of the Front Commands, one of the criminal groups dissident from the extinct guerrilla army of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
