QUITO, Ecuador (AFP)— Twelve people, including judges and politicians, were arrested in Ecuador Monday as part of a so-called “Purge” probe into officials suspected of ties to drug trafficking, the attorney general’s office said.

Attorney General Diana Salazar has in recent months launched a drive to clean up corrupt institutions as the once-peaceful country battles powerful narco gangs that have infiltrated the state.

Her office wrote on X that police had raided the homes and offices of magistrates, an ex-lawmaker, and the former president of a local court in the southwestern province of Guayas.

The operation came as a result of findings in Salazar’s “Metastasis” investigation which was unveiled in December and led to unprecedented raids and arrests against powerful officials.

Dozens of judges, politicians, prosecutors, police officers and a former prison director stand accused of handing out favors to gangsters in exchange for money, gold, prostitutes, apartments and other luxuries.

In Monday’s raid, the attorney general’s office said that two guns, Rolex watches, jewelry, and thousands of dollars in cash had been found at the home of a former lawmaker.

The operation “gives continuity to the purge that the country requires at this moment,” Salazar said in a video shared on X.

“We have evidence that shows the need to clean up the judicial system to get rid of corruption and the deep structural rot that we have witnessed in recent months,” she said.

Once considered a bastion of peace in Latin America, Ecuador has been plunged into crisis after years of expansion by transnational cartels that use its ports to ship drugs to the United States and Europe.

In January, President Daniel Noboa imposed a state of emergency and declared the country was in “a state of war” against the gangs who have links to Mexican and Colombian cartels.

He labeled around 20 criminal organisations as “terrorists” amid a wave of violence after a powerful gang boss escaped from prison.

He launched a military crackdown on the country’s jails and some 65 tons of drugs have since been seized in Ecuador.