The Ecuadorian justice requested the extradition of former President Rafael Correawho lives in Belgium and was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for corruption, reported this Friday the president of the National Court of Justice, Iván Saquicela.
(Read: Belgium grants political asylum to former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa)
“Yesterday (Thursday) I signed the ruling initiating the extradition processas corresponds by law, of former president Rafael Vicente Correa,” Saquicela said in an interview with the Teleamazonas channel.
(He is interested in: Drug trafficking, a challenge that is too disturbing for Ecuador)
The situation has unleashed a wave of criticism against the president who was in power for ten years, starting in 2007 and ending in May 2017, after leaving his co-party in office, Lenin Moreno.
His extradition request is based on corruption, being a position with which his government was constantly linked, has rekindled controversy throughout his ten years in the Carondelet Palace.
The messes of his ministers
Rafael Correa former president of Ecuador (File image).
First, there is the condemnation of Raúl Carrión, former sports minister during Correa’s first term, who was sentenced in April 2017 to five years in prison for embezzlement. In 2008 he left his post after various complaints, and in 2009 he was arrested and accused of money laundering, a charge from which he was released.
Time later he would be apprehended again by the authorities accused of embezzlement, although at the time he was not sentenced. At the moment, there are four convictions for this crime, in which they do not exceed five years in prison and are not cumulative either. He has three other trials without execution.
Carrión is joined by Fernando ‘El Comecheques’ Moreno, Carrión’s former adviser and who was sentenced to nine years in prison for money laundering, and who literally tried to eat the evidence against him.
In this accumulation of facts, Correa was criticized for his visit to Carrión in 2009, declaring in a radio space his mythical phrase of “Every person is innocent until proven otherwise… Raúl maintains that he did not know about the activity criminal, which I think is clear, of certain collaborators. And, well, that will have to be proven by the investigation”, seeking to defend the minister with whom he studied in his youth.
The controversy of the vests
“I never said they were the best vests in the world, there were technical guarantees in case they turned out bad,” said Ricardon Antón, who was director of the National Traffic Agency.
The controversy was raised by the irregularities in the purchase of vests for motorcyclists in 2010, an investment of more than ten million dollars to Intercontinental de Materials IMC, a subsidiary of the EICA group, a company managed by the state.
After the audits of the Comptroller of Ecuador, they registered a second contract for more than 600,000 vests, at a price of more than 1.2 million dollars, when there were barely 115,000 motorcycles registered.
These contracts had the signature of Antón and Yamil Chedrau, who sought to clarify the case by stating that the decisions were managed from the Ecuadorian Transit Commission (CTE).
The ‘narco bag’
In 2012, the Italian authorities seized a briefcase belonging to the Foreign Ministry of Ecuador, used for sending official documents, in which found liquid drug.
According to the first investigations, before the briefcase was sent, documents had been signed in which it was stipulated that every object in the bag was framed under the rank of ‘Exceptionality’.
The fact led the comptroller to find administrative rulings that had allowed the shipment of 40 kilos of cocaine. The situation was justified by Ricardo Patiño, having authorized the use of the bag to send non-diplomatic documents.
By January of that year, Cristian Loor, Jorge Luis Redroban, Luis Hurtado, Jesús Paz Toro and Jean Paul Flores were sentenced to eight, six and four years in prison, plus the payment of economic fines.
Finally, the act was classified by Correa as a malicious act and stated that “It has been shown that the Foreign Ministry had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
![Rafael Correa](https://www.eltiempo.com/images/1x1.png)
The Ecuadorian justice ordered preventive detention for the former Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa, on Tuesday. The measure was taken for his alleged link to the kidnapping of an opponent in 2012.
AFP / Aris Oikonomou
fake titles
You do not need an economist’s degree to be president of the Central Bank and Pedro Delgado has a master’s degree in Business Economics, having graduated from the Catholic University of Ecuador.
It was the same year 2012 in which the controversy once again surrounded Correa’s close circle, where the person affected was now his cousin Pedro Delgado, former president of the Board of Directors of the Central Bank (BC) and former representative of the Public Law Management and Execution Unit. of the AGD-CFN No More Impunity Trust (Ugedep).
At a press conference, after several comments from the media, Delgado stated that “I made a mistake. I made a decision that was a mistake that costs me dearly today. I delivered a worthless document of a title that I did not hold. I kept this a secret.”
From there, the official proceeded to resign. Days before the event, Correa had affirmed that he did not need a title to hold public office. After the resignation, Correa said that “The press was to blame for giving more confidence than Delgado deserved.”
Odebrecht
Finally, we go to the Odebrecht case in which several leaders of the continent were involved in the award of contracts for the execution of different public works.
After the disclosure of the ‘Panama Papers’, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported 24 inquiries for alleged acts of corruption within Petroecuador.
The Prosecutor’s Office immediately followed up on Álex Bravo and Carlos Pareja, who were later arrested for and accused of influence peddling and illicit enrichment.
From there, more than a dozen were linked to the acts of corruption in Petroecuador, of which in 2017 four were former employees of the company, while the rest were contractors.
![Sit-in against the Prosecutor](https://www.eltiempo.com/images/1x1.png)
With video projectors they were able to project the Odebrecht logo on the outer walls of the bunker for a moment
Maria Isabel Ortiz / TIME
In 2016, just before Christmas, the US State Department announced payments of up to 439 million dollars in twelve countries by the Brazilian construction company, including 33.5 destined for Ecuador, in which recorded profits of almost 116 million.
It was then in 2017 when the then Minister of Electricity, Alecksey Mosquera, and a businessman identified as Marcelo E., were placed under police detention for links to the construction company.
The granting of two contracts was worth a benefit of one million dollars to Mosquera, who would be the first court in Ecuador for this case. From there, officials of the stature of former Vice President Jorge Glas would be other of those convicted, as well as the total, to date, of about 34 officials linked to the construction company.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
More world news
– Belgium grants political asylum to former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa
– A teacher is banned from teaching young children for being ‘scary’
– They capture a bride for allegedly giving food with marijuana at her wedding
#Rafael #Correa #political #life #full #scandals