Abdalá and I

Meeting with "El Loco" in Panama in 2004 (Source: own photo)

They call him 'El Loco', the mad one.

This week, Abdalá Jaime Bucaram Ortiz, former president of Ecuador and larger-than-life crook was sentenced to more than nine years in jail for Covid-19 related fraud. I met the man in his home in Panama in 2004 at a rather critical point in his - and Ecuador's - political history. This is the story of that meeting and what happened to Abdalá Bucaram in the years that followed and his final incarceration this week.

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Bucaram was born into a political family in the coastal city of Guayaquil on 4 February 1952. His uncle was mayor of Guayaquil and his sister would marry former President Jaime Roldós Aguilera. Bucaram enjoyed sports and became a gym teacher. He gained fame as a hurdler and carried the Ecuadorian flag at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.

After the Olympics, he was president of a local football club before studying law and becoming Chief of Police in the province of Guayas. In 1984, he ran for mayor of Guayaquil and won. Then he founded one of the most populist political parties anywhere in South America, Partido Roldosista Ecuatoriano, commonly referred to as 'el PRE'.

By 1996, Bucaram had blossomed into the colourful politician his followers would love and adore. He decided to run for president. Campaigning from the back of an open truck surrounded by half-naked dancing girls, sometimes wearing a red cape and singing patriotic songs, he easily defeated Jaime Nebot, his bland opponent from the conservative quasi-mafiaesque Partido Social Cristiano (PSC). Bucaram's campaign songs were later compiled in an album titled "Un Loco Que Canta" (A Madman Who Sings), which is available on Spotify. Check it out here!

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Bucaram’s presidency began on 10 August 1996. His entertaining style of politics had been a source of hope to his supporters in a difficult period of crises and instability, but it soon became clear that Bucaram would not deliver what people had expected. During the campaign, one of his main election promises had been to boost education spending. This he did, but not by hiring more teachers or building more schools. Instead, he gave every kid in Ecuador a cheap school bag with a pencil case and a notebook. Bucaram hired his close associates to manufacture the bags, which were then sold to the Ministry of Education for astronomical sums, netting the president millions of Dollars.

Behaviour befitting of a president (Source: here)

All his actions as president were highly unconventional. He recorded a music album, while in office. He hosted massive public concerts, where he performed on stage and in televised broadcasts, dancing vigorously alongside young, mini-skirted backup dancers. One day he decided to shave off his moustache on live national television and then proceeded to grow an Adolf Hitler moustache instead. He invited Lorena Bobbitt to lunch at the presidential palace after she had gained global notoriety for severing her husband's penis. He gave speeches full of vulgar insults, calling his political opponents gangsters, fools, alcoholics, and burros. He appointed his teenage son to serve as the head of the country's customs service, which was one of the main sources of revenue in the country.

The moustache and the man (Source: here)

By 6 February 1997, Bucaram had embezzled so much money and behaved so erratically that the National Assembly declared him 'mentally incapable' of running the government. He was removed from the presidency exactly 180 days after taking office. He left Ecuador shortly afterwards and eventually sought asylum in Panama, where he would live on and off for the next twenty years.

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I met Bucaram in Panama some seven years after he had been kicked out of Ecuador. At the time, I was a Latin American sovereign credit analyst in the fixed income division of the investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston. I had been assigned to cover Ecuador and followed events in the country very closely. There was quite a lot of interest in Ecuador at the time due to the instability, which made the two outstanding government bonds - the Global 2012s and Global 2030s - very interesting from a trading perspective.

In early 2003, Lucio Gutierrez, a colonel in the Ecuadorian army, was elected president. His main appeal was that he appeared to have a bit of integrity, which is a scarce commodity in Ecuadorian politics. Twice he had famously refused to obey orders to suppress popular revolts against highly unpopular governments. In both cases, the governments collapsed. The first of these episodes, in 1997, involved Abdalá Bucaram; Gutierrez effectively ended Bucaram's presidency.

Lucio Gutierrez (Source: here) 

Gutierrez quickly proved far less adept at managing political coalitions than he had been at managing political crises. Soon after becoming president, he lost the support of the left-wing Pachakutik party, which left him with no choice but to work with the right-wing PSC. PSC had a nasty reputation for extreme ruthlessness, but for Gutierrez the relationship was born out of necessity rather than choice.

It was around this time that I went on a research trip to Ecuador with a bunch of investors in tow. We wanted to know what was going to happen next, so we could trade the 12s and 30s and make lots of money.

It was immediately obvious that Gutierrez was in deep trouble, so when the Ecuador part of the trip was over, I propsed to pop over to Panama to see if could get a meeting with Bucaram. Two of my investors tagged along. I was really just acting on a hunch. I figured that Gutierrez would still have one potential coalition partner left if relations with PSC broke down, namely el PRE. I had never met Bucaram before and I had no idea where to find him, but I picked up the phone and called his party in Ecuador. To my great delight, they set up a meeting for us. No other bank had approached Bucaramat that point, so I figured I would have a scoop. I was excited!

It was late Friday afternoon by the time we made it to Bucaram's spectacular penthouse overlooking Panama Bay. The elevator opened directly into his living room, which was bathed in rays from the afternoon sun. Bucaram met us in person with a big smile and outstretched arms. Such was his charisma that we immediately felt right at home. I have met such people before. It is so easy to be swept away. You really need to keep yourself in check and remind yourself, who you are dealing with, and why you are there.

Bucaram led us to a sofa in the middle of the living room and his Ecuadorian maid brought us coffee. After explaining why we were there and giving him a brief summary of what we had heard in Ecuador, he leaned forward and pointed to three mobile phones that lay side by side on the table in front of us. Then he said,

"You see those three phones? The first is for my family. The second phone is for my political party. And this one", he said with a smile, tapping the third phone with his index finger, "is for Lucio Gutierrez!"

He explained that he had had his brother give Gutierrez the number. Bucaram was convinced Gutierrez would call him very soon to ask for help. Bucaram said he had only one condition for returning to rescue his country, namely that the Supreme Court annul the National Assembly's ruling that he was mentally unfit for office.

"Look at me! I am as fit as a fiddle! And my country needs me!"

After we had finished talking politics, Bucaram reminded us that it was Friday. As he rose from the sofa, he explained that he always played a quick game of basketball with the lads on Fridays "down in the barrio" and would we like to join him? “Afterwards", he continued, “we party hard! Panamanian girls have the best asses in Latin America!"

Being a diligent banker with two clients in tow, I politely declined Bucaram's invitation, but I confess that I have often wondered how the weekend would have panned out had the three of us decided to stay and party with "El Loco" in Panama City!

Anyway, fast forward a few months to November of 2004, when PSC had stabbed Gutierrez in the back as is their wont. They had chosen their moment very carefully to ensure Gutierrez was at his most vulnerable. He needed PSC's votes to pass a critical tax reform to keep the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on board. PSC walked away without warning on the night of the vote, leaving Gutierrez politically isolated, without support in Congress, facing a financial crisis, and soon thereafter an impeachment trial on trumped-up charges.

By some miracle, which undoubtedly involved a lot of money changing hands, Gutierrez survived the impeachment trial by two votes. Still, the writing was on the wall. His time was up unless he found new political allies. There was only el PRE left.

And so it came to pass that, just as Bucaram had predicted in our meeting in Panama, Gutierrez picked up his phone and dialled the number of the third phone on Bucaram's coffee table. In so doing, Gutierrez was acting out of sheer desperation, because what else could prompt him to go begging-bowling to a man he had helped to oust from power just a few years earlier?

Gutierrez understood what was required of him. The following month, he launched a vicious attack on the Supreme Court, which he accused of pro-PSC bias. Then he paid what he had to pay to put together a coalition consisting of his own party, el PRE, and a number of smaller parties and independent MPs. Together, they stuffed the Supreme Court with friendly judges in breach of the Constitution (they did not have the required two-thirds majority in the National Assembly). On 31 March 2005, the new Supreme Court dropped all charges against Abdalá Bucaram. Two days later, on 2 April 2005, Bucaram returned to Ecuador.

In what is now regarded as one of the most chaotic, theatrical, and short-lived homecomings in modern political history, Bucaram first circled at a low height in a helicopter over his hometown of Guayaquil before landing on the city's main boulevard. He was received by thousands of hysterical fans. His return was designed to re-establish him as a dominant political force. As he stepped out of the helicopter, he proclaimed that he was “older and crazier than ever” and that he would run for president "immediately".

Bucaram puts his heart into it (Source: here) 

This left no one in any doubt, including Gutierrez; Bucaram had not come back to help the president. Bucaram had come back to become president himself. This was Bucaram's way of getting his own back after Gutierrez refused to help him stay in office in 1997.

But Bucaram's return did not go as he had hoped. Instead of launching his campaign for president, his return triggered a massive nationwide backlash. By 20 April 2005, protests had swept up President Gutiérrez, who was ousted from power. The Supreme Court was dissolved and the former judges re-appointed. Bucaram's corruption charges were reinstated. On 26 April 2005, Bucaram fled back to Panama to resume exile.

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By the time all this drama was playing out in Ecuador, I had left Credit Suisse First Boston and was now trading bonds in an investment management company in London. Bucaram returned to Ecuador in 2017, when the statute of limitations expired on the corruption and embezzlement charges against him. The world appared to be moving on. Bucaram was no longer the political force he had once been.

Still, there was to be one final chapter in the Bucaram story. In 2020, Bucaram suddenly hit the headlines again, when he was arrested for illegal hoarding of Covid-19 medical supplies. The arrest took place at the height of the Ecuadorian pandemic, which was horrific with excess mortality between 50% to 64% above normal expected baseline mortality. Bucaram's hometown of Guayaquil was particularly badly hit. Healthcare and morgue systems had collapsed and more than 36,000 people died, many on the streets.

Bucaram was charged with illegally marketing 21,000 COVID-19 kits. While the people in the town, where he had been mayor were dying in droves, he was hoarding and selling the test kits and medical supplies that could have saved them. On 9 September 2026 after a lengthy trial, he was found guilty of unjustified private enrichment, tax fraud, misuse of public funds, and forgery of public documents and sentenced to nine years and four months in jail.

Bucaram is now 74 years of age and suffers from a serious heart condition. He may be eligible to serve his prison term in house arrest on account of his poor health, but he is unlikely ever to cause trouble in Ecuador again. In a time of rising populism in the United States and many parts of Europe, Bucaram is a timely reminder of the importance of looking beyond charisma in politics. The entertainment value of a populist politicians never makes up for the utter destruction they leave in their wake.

The End