On June 12, 2026, the Superintendency of Economic Competition issued Resolution SCE-DS-2026-25, through which it suspended the calculation of deadlines and procedural terms in all administrative and sanctioning proceedings for one day and closed the physical and virtual service windows of the General Secretariat on that same date. Subsequently, on June 15, 2026, the SCE issued Resolution SCE-DS-2026-27, which expanded the effects of the previous resolution retroactively to June 10 and ordered a new suspension of 15 days starting on June 15, 2026.

Between June 10 and June 12, 2026, the SCE's institutional email infrastructure suffered a reputational impact affecting its public IP address, caused by mass email transmissions from the domain “sce.gob.ec”. Although the SCE implemented corrective measures (IP change, updating SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records), Gmail continued applying its own reputation-based restrictions, with an estimated normalization period of up to 15 days, beyond the control of the SCE.

Due to the inability to effectively notify parties using Gmail accounts, the Superintendent suspended the calculation of deadlines and procedural terms in all SCE administrative and sanctioning proceedings for one day (June 12) and closed the physical and virtual service windows of the General Secretariat on that same day.

As the incident persisted, on June 15 the previous resolution was expanded and supplemented in two respects:

• Retroactive effect: the suspension was extended to the period from June 10 to June 14, 2026, pursuant to Article 102 of the COA (acts with favorable retroactive effect).
• New suspension: an additional suspension of 15 business days was ordered, starting on June 15, 2026, for all SCE proceedings.

The SCE classified the situation as force majeure or a technological fortuitous event pursuant to Article 162, numeral 5 of the COA, as it was an external event not attributable to the parties involved. Resolution SCE-DS-2026-27 also applied Article 102 of the COA to recognize favorable retroactive effects as of June 10. Throughout the entire period, the service windows remained operational for the receipt of documents.

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