QUITO.- Ecuador will deny the former vice president safe passage Jorge Glaswho is seeking refuge in the Mexican embassy in Quito and is threatened with preventive detention, as Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld warned on Friday.
Refusal to allow safe passage is preventing Gla from leaving the country while he faces an investigation over alleged diversion of funds intended for reconstruction of areas hit by a 2016 earthquake.
The public prosecutor's office accuses the case of “misuse of state resources” and points out that there is so far no evidence of reconstruction work after the earthquake. In addition to Glas, two other former officials of Rafael Correa's government are involved and are being prosecuted for alleged embezzlement.
Glas, who headed a reconstruction committee, was sentenced to six years in prison in 2017 for the Odebrecht corruption scheme and was paroled in 2022. The Ecuadorian chancellor argued that asylum was not appropriate in this case because it was a criminal investigation. Glass's defense attempts to protect his physical integrity by citing the insecurity in prisons.
It should be noted that last March, another former minister in the Correa government, María de los Ángeles Duarte, fled the Argentine embassy after more than two years of refuge when Ecuador denied her safe passage. This incident sparked a diplomatic crisis between Quito and Buenos Aires.
In recent years, Mexico has granted asylum or refuge to former Correa government officials, including former Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño and representatives Soledad Buendía, Carlos Viteri and Gabriela Rivadeneira.
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SPRING: With information from AFP