The Attorney General of Ecuador, Diana Salazar, requested this Friday the house arrest for former President Lenín Moreno (2017-2021) when formulating his accusation for the
Sinohydro case, which revolves around alleged bribery received for the construction of the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant.
At the hearing to present the accusation for bribery, Salazar considered it necessary to pretrial detention for the 37 defendants in the casebut the Constitution prevents this measure for those over 65, as is the case of Moreno, his wife and 12 other investigated, for whom he requested house arrest.
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The prosecutor also requested Judge Adrián Rojas, of the National Court of Justice, retain and immobilize the accounts of all the accused, including those who reside abroad, as is the case of Moreno, who works in Paraguay as commissioner of the Organization of American States (OAS) for Disability Affairs.
In this sense, he asked the magistrate for authorization to request international judicial cooperation from Switzerland, Spain, China, Panama, Paraguay, the United States and Belize.
Salazar said that the Chinese state company Sinohydro allegedly paid bribes of around $76 millionwhich made the work of the largest hydroelectric plant in Ecuador more expensive from 1,979 million dollars to 2,245 million dollars.
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In the case of the former president and his family, estimated the alleged illicit money received at $660,000of which 220,000 would allegedly correspond to Moreno and his wife in the form of a house and furniture.
Other relatives of Lenín Moreno splashed
The prosecutor assigned the remaining $440,000 to Moreno’s brothers Edwin ($350,000) and Guillermo ($10,000), his daughter Irina ($50,000), his sisters-in-law Jacqueline ($10,000) and Martha ($15,000), and his mother-in-law. Aida Graciela ($5,000).
According to the thesis defended by Salazar, the bulk of the alleged bribes allegedly had Conto Patiño as beneficiaries, friend of former President Moreno, and his family, with a value of 44 million dollars.
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The prosecutor’s indictment also includes two managers of Coca Codo Sinclair and the former Chinese ambassador to Ecuador Cai Runguo, who at the time was the legal representative of Sinohydro.
Former President Moreno appeared at the hearing telematically, by videoconference.
Sinohydro bribery case
The Sinohydro case broke out in 2019, when the journalistic portal La Fuente published an investigation in which one of Moreno’s brothers was involved. with alleged accounts in tax havens and a luxurious property in Alicante (Spain), in an apparent triangulation of an opaque company.
In that journalistic report, a series of links and alleged irregularities were revealed that linked Moreno to the “offshore” company INA Investment, which led to a initial investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office on alleged bribes collected when he held the Vice Presidency of Ecuador, during the presidential term of Rafael Correa (2007-2017).
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However, the ex-governor has categorically denied that complaint and has suggested that this obeys a political strategy of Correa, his main detractorwho resides in Belgium and who has been sentenced by the Ecuadorian Justice for bribery in another corruption case.
With a capacity of 1,500 megawatts, the Coca Codo Sinclair Hydroelectric Power Plant is on the Coca River, between the Amazonian provinces of Napo and Sucumbíos, and its infrastructure is in question due to the appearance of thousands of fissures in its structure, even before it went live in 2016.
EFE
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