Perched fewer than 50 miles inland from Ecuador’s Pacific coast, Hacienda Rodeo Grande is a paradise of calm at this time of year.
Buffaloes roam across acres of land adjoining the colonial-style house. Bananas and mangoes gently ripen on the trees. And with temperatures stretching into the 30s, the tranquil gardens are often filled with the scent of jacaranda and hibiscus blooms in the run-up to Christmas Day.
But it was here, exactly a week ago, that former honorary British Consul Colin Armstrong OBE was snatched by 15 men dressed in fake police uniforms at the start of a terrifying and somewhat surreal kidnapping ordeal; one which, it might be said – particularly now that the saga has thankfully ended with the 78-year-old’s safe release – could have been ripped straight from the pages of a Graham Greene novel.
Bundled into his own black BMW at gunpoint, the millionaire businessman – formerly known as ‘Our Man in Guayaquil’ – was kidnapped last Saturday, along with Katherine Paolo Santos, a Colombian model and pole dancer, later described by Ecuadorian police as his ‘romantic partner’.
The high-octane drama took another bizarre turn when, just hours after the kidnapping, Ms Santos turned up at a gated property believed to belong to Mr Armstrong’s son Nick, wearing what she told police was a vest filled with explosives which would blow up if a ransom to free Mr Armstrong wasn’t paid to the criminal gang behind his kidnapping.
A BRITISH millionaire kidnapped by a brutal crime cartel in Ecuador has been rescued – and his younger girlfriend is being questioned by police after being ‘released’ wearing a fake bomb vest
Video footage has since emerged on social media apparently showing his glamourous girlfriend having an explosives vest removed by a bomb disposal expert
The gang thought to be behind the kidnapping of British millionaire Colin Armstrong
Colin Armstrong, 78, and partner Katherine Paola Santos are pictured together on a yacht
While bomb disposal officers in protective gear removed the vest, they later revealed it to be a fake.
On Tuesday evening at around 11pm, three days after Ms Santos’ release, Mr Armstrong was picked up by police who found him wandering along a main road in the coastal province of Manabi, about 150 miles southwest of the capital, Quito.
But while this sinister saga has seemingly been brought to a happy ending by the Policia Nacional del Ecuador who have already made nine arrests and confiscated a huge haul of guns, grenades, detonators and drugs, serious questions remain for investigating officers including whether or not Mr Armstrong’s kidnappers had help from someone with insider knowledge.
How did the armed raiders know that he would be at Rodeo Grande last weekend given that he divides his time between several properties in the same area and others including his main family home in Guayaquil, an industrial coastal city, as well as a vast country estate in North Yorkshire which has been in the Armstrong family for over a century?
And who is the mysterious and very voluptuous Colombian woman who has been at Mr Armstrong’s side in recent years given that, just 18 months ago, Mr Armstrong was publicly paying tribute to his wife Cecilia, whom he married 49 years ago, at a glitzy event attended by hundreds of his employees?
With an ex-local MP publicly implicating Santos in the crime, she is said to have been quizzed by police about her alleged involvement in the kidnapping plot.
Father-of-three Mr Armstrong, meanwhile, is said to be ‘safe and healthy’ after police released a photograph of him, smiling for the camera in a police-issue baseball cap and long-sleeved t-shirt – remarkable, given everything he has been through in the past week.
But then the Manchester-born businessman, as the Mail can reveal, is no stranger to danger.
Having travelled the globe as a young man working for what was then British chemical company, ICI, he set up his own agricultural distribution company, Agripac, in Ecuador where he has lived for half a century.
Over the decades, his extraordinary life has been punctuated with more moments of high drama than most would people would expect to experience in their careers.
From devastating floods and military coups, to the murder of one of his former managers who died while trying to fend off armed robbers, Mr Armstrong has certainly seen more than his fair share of trouble over the past five decades.
Barely a year into his role as honorary consul and in the midst of the Falklands War, he was forced to fend off pro-Argentine sympathisers who turned up at the British Consulate in Guayaquil demanding a Union Jack to burn.
While rubbing shoulders with the likes of Princess Anne and entertaining former Tory Minister John Gummer and ex Tory MP David Mellor in his consular role, Mr Armstrong has also had to confront cattle rustlers and hired armed guards to patrol his ranch and sleep in the house when the property was unoccupied.
In a memoir about his life, published in 2001, he wrote that the guards he employed, who could sometimes be found drinking in ‘the local cantina’, weren’t always reliable and that he’d taken to sleeping with a loaded revolver close to hand.
Even in Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil on the Pacific coast, where he and his wife ‘Ceci’ bought a lakeside home in a securely gated development more than 20 years ago, he commented that ‘robbery is an increasing problem as the population grows.’
Once regarded as relatively safe and stable destination, in recent years Ecuador has, like several South American countries, suffered soaring corruption and violent crime; the result of weak economic growth, volatile politics and cocaine trafficking gangs, backed by powerful Mexican cartels, looking for new routes out of the continent.
Colin Armstrong, 78, and partner Katherine Paola Santos are pictured together
Pictures on TikTok show wealthy businessman Colin Armstrong, 78, and partner Katherine Paola Santos enjoying a jet-set lifestyle prior to their kidnapping on Saturday
Situated between Colombia and Peru, the world’s biggest cocaine producers, Ecuador with its ocean coastline is seen as a key location.
In August this year, presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, a vocal critic of corruption and drug crime, was shot in the head three times after leaving a campaign rally in the capital Quito.
Since 2016, the national murder rate has soared by almost 500 per cent as ruthless drug cartels run amok.
Guayaquil is regarded as the country’s most dangerous city, with 1,390 violent deaths recorded in the first half of this year.
Across the country, meanwhile, there were 4,600 further killings and as many as 26 drug trafficking gangs whose numbers, say experts, could rival the nation’s 60,000-strong police force.
The labyrinth of islands which sit in the delta of the Guayas estuary, for which the city is named, are said to be littered with body parts – graveyards for the victims of drugs wars and kidnappings.
Reports from Ecuador this week claimed that Mr Armstrong had been abducted after he refused to pay monthly protection money.
His son, Nick, who took over his father’s consular role in 2016, has previously led the British-Ecuadorian chamber of industries and commerce.
He also works as a director of Ripon Race Company in North Yorkshire and helps his father run Agripac.
Extortion is one of the charges which police have made against those arrested for his kidnap.
According to police sources, evidence found during raids this week suggest that last weekend’s kidnapping was planned in meticulous detail.
Gang members arrived at Rodeo Grande, where the Armstrong family crest hangs next to the gate along with the family motto ‘Trans Mare Video’ – ‘I see beyond the sea’ – in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Staff members who tried to stop them were beaten as they made their way to the room where ‘Mr Colin’, as he is known by his employees, was sleeping.
A short video made by a member of staff in the aftermath of the raid, showed blood stains on sheets and on the floor of one room.
Mr Armstrong was forced at gunpoint, along with Ms Santos, into his own black BMW which has diplomatic licence plates. After activating satellite tracking, police later found the car abandoned.
Within hours, news of the kidnapping was all over Ecuadorian media along with several photographs taken from Ms Santos’ social media accounts which suggest a close relationship between him and Ms Santos. In one they appear to be on safari in Africa; in another, visiting Egypt.
There are photographs of them in beachwear, with a delighted-looking and moustachioed Mr Armstrong in a Panama hat and shorts and bearing more than a passing similarity to the British actor Terry-Thomas as he wraps his arms around a seemingly devoted Ms Santos.
There is also video footage of Mr Armstrong at what appears to be Ms Santos’ 30th birthday on board a luxury yacht with dozens of other scantily-clad young women.
On her LinkedIn page, Ms Santos, who is listed on the books of Ecuadorian modelling agency Studio Moda, says she has worked for Agripac since 2013.
The company, which sells everything from seeds, fertilisers to pet food, uses models, often dressed as cowgirls, for promotional work and Ms Santos appears in photographs with Mr Armstrong taken at Rodeo Grande as far back as 2014.
In the past, the vast property, which also has horses and flocks of ostriches, has been used as a wedding venue and to host events such as as the Miss Ecuador Beauty Pageant as well as to entertain Agripac employees.
It was at a glittering event to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary, held at the Club de La Union in Guayaquil in May 2022, that Mr Armstrong stood on stage with his wife and three children, Nicholas, 47, Diana, 45, and Alexandra, 42.
He appeared visibly moved as he thanked the woman he calls ‘Ceci’ in front of hundreds of people before embracing her tightly.
They were on stage again, together with two of their children, at an Agripac sales convention in November last year.
Mr Armstrong comes from a line of adventurous businessmen but his family also has strong links to the world of horse racing.
Police showed off the stash they had confiscated from the gang, which included five grenades, six firearms, 1,500 cartridges, 30 detonating fuses, two vehicles and ‘several kilos of substances subject to control’
On Wednesday Cesar Augusto Zapata Correa, Ecuador’s police chief, tweeted that Mr Armstrong (pictured) had been found on near Manabi not far from Los Rios where he was snatched
Mr Armstrong’s daughter Diana Armstrong-Bruns (pictured), an estate agent based in California, had told earlier this week following his kidnapping: ‘This is a critical time, we’ve been told not to say anything to anyone. We just want my father back’
Both his grandfather, Bob, and father, Gerard, were amateur jockeys and trainers. Mr Armstrong’s cousin Susan went on to marry the late legendary jockey Lester Piggott.
He was educated privately at a Lake District prep school before being sent to Rossall School near Blackpool.
Intending to become a farmer he eschewed university for Harper Adams Agricultural College and afterwards volunteered for International Voluntary Service before being sent to run a farm in what was then the small British protectorate of Swaziland.
After traveling across the US and Mexico, he started work for ICI in 1968, a position which took him to Malaysia and Mexico before he landed in Ecuador in the early 1970s.
His then 20-year-old wife, Cecilia, was working as a secretary for a French count when he met her in 1972.
They married in 1974. While building up the company together, they became well-known fixtures on the Ecuadorian social scene, rubbing shoulders with royalty, diplomats and businessmen and hosting Out of African style parties at Hacienda Rodeo Grande where guests were asked to dress in all white.
Back in the UK, Mr Armstrong also acquired Tupgill Park, just outside the racing town of Middleham in North Yorkshire, which had originally been purchased as stables by his grandfather in 1904.
He set about renovating it and converted part of the 1,500-acre grounds into private pleasure garden and tourist attraction called Forbidden Corner which now attracts up to 100,000 visitors a year.
Given his high profile, it is perhaps not surprising that vast amounts of Ecuadorian police resources were devoted to ensuring Mr Armstrong’s safe return this week.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office confirmed that it had also supported the Ecuadorian authorities. British intelligence services are also said to have assisted the police operation.
So far, nine people, one foreign national and eight Ecuadorians have been arrested. It is not known if any ransom was paid.
But with the kidnapping shining a spotlight on the deteriorating security situation in the country, police authorities say that are still investigating this extraordinarily audacious kidnapping plot and following up several leads.
Speaking to the Mail this week, General Freddy Sarzosa Guerra, the police’s director of investigations, said: ‘This is being investigated as a kidnap for money and the motive was an economic one.’
For now the Armstrong family have asked for privacy to recover from the shocking events of the past week.
‘All of the UK family, staff and friends are delighted with the outcome and look forward to a happier Christmas,’ said Leo Morris, who is director of Tupgill Park Estate where he grew up and is regarded as an ‘adopted son’ by Mr Armstrong.
It remains to be seen if this terrifying ordeal has soured his relationship with the country to which he has devoted more than half his life.
But with Christmas just a couple of days away, he and his family must be all too aware, given the spiralling violence in Ecuador, how lucky they are to be spending this year’s festivities together.