Police in Ecuador are investigating the murder of a journalist in western Guayas province, whose body was found a day before a correspondent for the newspaper El Universo received a series of death threats.

Luis Arnoldo “Noro” Ruiz, a correspondent for Extra and a former contributor to El Universo was found shot in the head on Sep. 3 near a roadside close to the town of El Morro, news reports said. Family members identified the body on Sep. 6 after several days of searching for the missing journalist.

In addition to his work as a journalist, Ruiz was reportedly also a local money lender. The Guayas provincial prosecutor, Xavier Espinoza, told the media that Ruiz may have been targeted for revenge or in relation to debt troubles, though he underscored that the investigation was remained in preliminary stages. Police have detained several individuals for questioning, including Ruiz’s companion, Mariana Bohórquez.

As in all cases where the motive behind the death of a journalist is unclear, the International Press Institute (IPI) urges Guayas police to undertake a careful investigation that does not dismiss the possibility that Ruiz may have been targeted for reasons related to his reporting.

On Sep. 4, Antonio Medrano, a correspondent for El Universo in the city of Babahoyo, reported he had been the target of telephone death threats, Ecuadorean media and the press freedom organisation Fundamedios reported.

Speaking to Fundamedios, Medrano said he had received two phone calls in the morning. The first speaker, who the journalist indicated spoke with an Ecuadorean accent, said, “motherf*** we’re going to kill you.” Moments later, a second caller, reportedly with a Colombian accent, added: “I’m Colombian, and we are going to kill you for messing with my wife.”

Medrano told Fundamedios he did not recognise the callers or understand the meaning of the second threat, but did believe the threats could be related to his work. The journalist has covered politics and criminal justice for El Universo for the past 15 years.

El Universo, one of Ecuador’s leading private newspapers, made headlines earlier this year after three of its owners and and the paper’s opinion editor were ordered to pay a total of $40 million and sentenced to three months in prison each for defaming President Rafael Correa in a Sep. 2011 opinion column. A decision upholding the verdict came shortly after the two authors of the book Big Brother were ordered to pay the president $1 million each for similar offences.

Correa later announced a pardon in both cases, but last month El Universo’s opinion editor, Emilio Palacio, announced he had been granted political asylum by the United States, where he fled after the original verdict was announced.

Recently, private media outlets in the country have sought to use legal measures to push back against the Correa administration. As reported in the Ecuadorean press, Fundamedios last week asked a court to nullify the president’s decision, announced over the summer, that government ministers would no longer be allowed to give interviews to private media. César Ricaurte, director of Fundamedios, wrote in a court brief that the measure was “discriminatory and constitutes a public policy that chafes with fundamental individual liberties”.

Last month, the executive president of the magazine Vanguardia announced a $2 million (1.6 million euros) lawsuit against President Correa for “moral harm” after the president publicly accused the publication of labour violations, reports indicated. The president’s comments came a week after Ecuadoren police raided Vanguardia’s offices and confiscated computers and other equipment in connection with a labour investigation.

IPI Deputy Director Anthony Mills said: “We continue to urge the Ecuadorean government to end its confrontation with the media, and ensure that rights of the independent press, including equal access to the government, are respected.”

He added: “Death threats against journalists need to be taken very seriously, and we expect police to undertake a full investigation into the threats made to Antonio Medrano.”

IPI, concerned at the deteriorating state of press freedom in Ecuador, conducted a press freedom mission to Ecuador in May to meet with a wide range of actors and offer its support in a deepening and highly public conflict between private media, public media, and the Correa administration. The final report from the mission will be released this month.