Wirtualna Polska has obtained a copy of the hard drive of Monika Silva-Koniuszek, a Polish woman murdered in June in Ecuador. According to WP, the activist gathered documents on a network of companies that allegedly served to launder money from drug trafficking.
According to WP’s report published on Sunday, 1 November, a man contacted the newsroom, first handing over some of the documents and, a few weeks later, a copy of the drive’s contents. These are almost half a thousand files, often publicly available. The Balkan investigative portal BIRN (Balkan Insight), which also came into possession of the drive, published similar findings on 28 October. No authorities have so far confirmed the authenticity of the materials.
What the documents contain
As WP describes, the activist was documenting the activities of the Panamanian company Sunshine Management Limited. Her materials reportedly show that a network of affiliated firms was used for cross-border money laundering between Ecuador and Panama. Among the shareholders were reportedly six US citizens, including two people with final convictions for drug smuggling. According to WP, the materials also reference Albanian criminal groups.
The second thread concerns the purchase of land by the municipality of Santa Elena in 2009–2013 for more than 10 million dollars. According to documents cited by WP, the plots were supposed to go toward a housing project that was never built. The network of companies linked to Sunshine was allegedly to take over attractive coastal areas. These are the activist’s allegations, not findings of the prosecutor’s office.
Letters to authorities and the US embassy
WP reports that on 14 July 2025, Silva-Koniuszek sent the information she had gathered to the US ambassador in Quito, the office of President Daniel Noboa, and Interior Minister John Reimberg. In November 2025, a deputy minister replied that the matter had been passed to the Comptroller General, who is conducting a „special audit”.
Messages from March 2026 reportedly remain on the drive. According to WP, the activist arranged a meeting with a representative of the US embassy, handed over documents, including about Noboa Trading, a company owned by the president’s family, and then contact broke off. Journalist Andrés Durán, who wrote about Noboa Trading and left Ecuador after threats, tells WP that he received documents from her and urged her to flee. The person she named as linked to the company has never been charged. The US embassy in Quito and the Ecuadorian embassy in Austria did not respond to WP’s questions.
What is known about the death
The activist, a mother of two daughters, had lived in Ecuador since 2018. According to PAP, she was 41 and was found dead on 8 June in Montañita. Initially, Ecuador’s interior minister spoke of suicide. A second autopsy, as WP reports, ruled out that version and pointed to a blow to the head and strangulation. The prosecutor’s office in Poland, as PAP reported spokesman Daniel Brodowski said, received a preliminary report indicating the involvement of third parties. The investigation is led by the District Prosecutor’s Office in Olsztyn; according to WP, the prosecutor refused to speak with it. The European Union called for a „swift, thorough, independent and transparent” investigation, as TVP World reported.
Ecuador’s prosecutor’s office did not release the body to the family for 129 days, as WP reports. No one has been publicly charged with murder, and the link between the documents and the killing remains a hypothesis of associates and the media.
What it means
The case involves a Polish citizen, so a Polish investigation is running in parallel. If the documents reach the Olsztyn prosecutor’s office, they may become evidence. As of publication, we have not found an official response from the Ecuadorian government or the US embassy to the revealed materials.
