Jorge Glas, Vice President of Ecuador under the governments of Rafael Correa and Lenín Moreno, entered the Mexican Embassy in Quito this Sunday afternoon to ask for protection. Prosecutors have requested the location and arrest of the controversial Citizen Revolution politician without specifying why he is being prosecuted. It is a new scandal for the former official, who served nearly five years in prison for corruption crimes and was released last year.
The Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry has called on Mexican authorities to “invite Mr. Glas to cooperate with police authorities.” The State Department said in a statement that it “expects the cooperation that Mexico provides to this end.” Various sentences put strain on glass. One of them, six years in prison for illicit association in the Odebrecht case. Another eight years for bribery in the bribery case that also saw Correa and more than a dozen officials in his government convicted.
It is not the first diplomatic conflict caused by an official in the Correa government. Former Transport and Public Works Minister María de los Ángeles Duarte took refuge in the Argentine embassy for almost three years to avoid an eight-year prison sentence for bribery. In March 2023, he fled the diplomatic mission, an escape that meant the severance of relations between the two governments.
The Mexican government is already welcoming to its territory other former officials who had previously sought refuge in the embassy in Quito. Among them are the former President of the Assembly, Gabriela Rivadeneira, and Assembly members Soledad Buendía, Carlos Viteri Gualinga and Edwin Jarrín. They left the country in 2019 after violent demonstrations during a nationwide strike.
Jorge Glas is one of the most visible faces of the civil revolution. During the Correa government he held important positions: Minister of Telecommunications, Strategic Sectors. In the last term of his office, he took over the office of vice president. He held this position during the Moreno administration until prosecutors prosecuted him for corruption.
Glass surrendered to justice and spent almost five years behind bars. He tried to escape from prison three times. He achieved this in November 2022 on the third attempt thanks to a precautionary measure by Judge Emerson Curipallo, although this robe came from a different jurisdiction than the one that carried out the trial.
Judge Curipallo was arrested on December 14 as part of the mega-operation Metastasis for his alleged involvement in a corruption conspiracy in the judicial system. The film was directed by drug trafficker Leandro Norero, alias El Patrón, from prison. In addition to Glas, Curipallo also used the same judicial measures to release the leaders of one of the Ecuadorian crime gangs, Santiago Madrid and John Navarrete, known by their aliases Madrid and Cuyuyui.
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