What is the former vice president of Ecuador Jorge Glas, arrested this Friday, accused of?

The former vice president of Ecuador Jorge Glas was arrested this Friday (5) at the Mexican embassy in Quito, where he had gone as a “guest” and requested asylum in December 2023, alleging “political persecution” by the authorities courts in your country, according to your lawyer. The Public Ministry of Ecuador accuses him of the crime of embezzlement.

Before his arrest, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his government would try to get Glas into its territory. “Because you are asking us and we consider the right to asylum sacred,” said AMLO, as the principal is also known. After the arrest, the Mexican president announced the severing of diplomatic relations with Ecuador.

Glas, who served under Rafael Correa and Lenín Moreno, was convicted of the crimes of illicit association (2017) and aggravated bribery (2020) as part of the “Odebrecht plot”, for which he was sentenced to six and eight years in prison, respectively . In November 2022, Glas was released from prison after four and a half years in prison following a habeas corpus appeal presented by his lawyer and which granted him provisional release due to partial completion of his sentence.

These are the cases that Glas faces in Ecuador:

Reconstruction of Manabí

Several court cases revolve around former vice president Jorge Glas, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

In the first instance is the case known as the Reconstruction of Manabí, in which Glas must answer for the alleged crime of embezzlement, as stated by the attorney general of Ecuador, Diana Salazar, on December 18th on the “Conclusions” program on CNN en Español.

According to the prosecutor, the former vice president was summoned to give a version to the Public Prosecutor's Office for this case, in which the judge will accuse him of embezzlement, but, warned Salazar, there is no arrest warrant for this case, for which would not be detained.

In the Manabí Reconstruction case, Glas (along with other co-defendants) must answer for allegedly committing embezzlement through misuse of public resources. According to the Public Ministry, the facts occurred during his tenure as president of the Committee for the Reconstruction and Productive Reactivation of Employment, which was created after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that shook the Manabí region, in northern Ecuador, in April 2016. That year, the Organic Law of Solidarity and Citizen Co-responsibility was issued, whose objective was to reconstruct and economically reactivate the country's coastal areas affected by the earthquake.

In 2019, the General Comptroller of Ecuador determined alleged irregularities in a contract signed in March 2017 with which the work on the 22-kilometer Manta-Colisa road was awarded, at a cost of more than US$68 million with money from this fund . The Public Ministry stated that this road did not comply with the axes proposed by the Solidarity Law – emergency, reconstruction and reactivation – but that it was still awarded.

The attorney general explained the basis of this accusation in a message she published on X, on June 1, 2023, highlighting that this road was established as a priority “without taking into account that there were 587 reconstruction projects for public housing, health and education that required immediate attention after the earthquake.”

The Public Ministry stated in September that these funds “were not used primarily in projects in the context of the earthquake, that is, they were not emergent nor were they directed to the victims”.

The Public Prosecutor's Office then sent its subpoena to Glas but, according to what prosecutor Salazar said in the Conclusions, Glas presented a document in which he indicated that his lawyer did not inform him in advance that he had to make a statement and changed lawyers. However, said the official, “he says he is willing to cooperate.”

And although Glas' lawyer says that his client is “politically persecuted”, the prosecutor said on CNN that the former vice president “is not politically persecuted, because… the legal situation was resolved by the judges based on the evidence that the Public Prosecutor presented it in court.”

Regarding this case, Glas' international lawyer, Sonia Vera García, denied the former vice president's guilt and said that, although he was part of a commission “that had no power to allocate funds”, he was accused in this investigation.

“This raises questions about the motivations behind his accusation and the lack of concrete evidence against him,” Vera García said in a statement sent to CNN.

In response to the Public Prosecutor's Office's insistence, national judge Luis Rivera scheduled a hearing for January 5 to frame charges against Glas for alleged embezzlement in the Manabí Reconstruction case.

The ratification of sentences

Since 2017, Glas had served a prison sentence for convictions of illicit association and aggravated bribery. On November 28, 2022, a judge accepted a request for habeas corpus for medical and security reasons, and the former vice president was released from prison and released on provisional release.

In 2022, the government said it feared a possible escape by Glas, but his lawyer at the time, Edison Loayza, said his client had no intention of fleeing the country.

But this week, Ecuador's Constitutional Court ratified Glas' previous decisions, claiming that the habeas corpus appeals presented by his lawyer violated due process, legal certainty, the nature of habeas corpus and the competence of functions in the judicial system.

Prosecutor Salazar told CNN on December 19 that 60 people, including Glas, benefited from Judge Emerson Curipallo's release decision and that he “discredited the figure of habeas corpus”.

CNN was unable to establish contact with Judge Curipallo.

Eduardo Franco Loor, Glas' lawyer, said in the Conclusions that he fears for his client's integrity.

With information from Ana María Cañizares and Fernando de Rincón from CNN en Español.