01-07-2025
Ecuador's former vice-president Jorge Glas sentenced after dramatic embassy raid
An Ecuadorian court has sentenced former vice president Jorge Glas to 13 additional years in prison for misusing public funds allocated to rebuild areas affected by a devastating 2016 earthquake.
Glas, 55, is currently in prison serving out convictions in two prior corruption cases and had been due for release in little under three years.
However, Monday's sentence means his jail time is extended until 2041.
The court said it had applied the maximum possible sentence.
The politician, who had served as vice president under the leftist Rafael Correa, was captured by Ecuadorian authorities following a raid on the Mexican embassy in Quito last year.
The raid led to the severing of diplomatic ties between Ecuador and Mexico, and prompted Mexico to put in a complaint to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Mexico maintained Ecuador violated international law by breaching the embassy, while Ecuador accused its counterpart of illegally granting asylum to Glas.
Glas's court case had revolved around the reconstruction work carried out after a devastating earthquake in Ecuador's coastal provinces of Manabi and Esmeraldas in 2016, which left nearly 700 people dead.
The Supreme Court in Quito ruled that Glas did not use the millions of dollars collected from Ecuadorian taxes towards the reconstruction for that purpose.
Some of the money was used to build a bridge in a remote area far from the disaster zone.
Carlos Bernal, a former official tasked with leading the reconstruction work, was also given 13 more years in jail.
Glas's lawyer argued there was no evidence of misappropriation of public funds for personal benefit or that of third parties, nor harm to the national treasury.
During the trial, Glas insisted he had no access to the earthquake reconstruction fund and did not manage contracts awarded by the reconstruction committee.
He has long argued that he is a "politically persecuted person".
Supporters were quick to condemn the court ruling.
Sacha Llorenti, General Coordinator of the International Commitee for the Freedom of Jorge Glas, called it "outrageous and abhorrent".
"Without evidence, political decisions are being made to keep Jorge as a political prisoner," he wrote on social media.
Outside of court, Glas's defence lawyer Andrés Villegas told reporters the "dignity" of the nation's criminal justice system had been "buried" with the sentence.
In 2017, Glas was removed through a decree of Correa's successor Lenín Moreno.
Shortly after his removal, Glas was sentenced to six years in prison for leading a million-dollar corruption network between politicians and embattled construction company Odebrecht.
The Odebrecht scandal — named after Latin America's largest construction conglomerate — is labelled by the region's legal advocates as one of the "largest transnational bribery schemes ever uncovered".
In 2020, Glas was found guilty for his role in a separate scheme where he collected bribes in exchange for issuing public contracts between 2012 and 2016.
He was sentenced to eight years in jail.
In 2022, an Ecuadorian judge ordered Glas be released from prison, after his lawyers claimed Glas was not safe behind bars.
It was after this he sought refuge in Mexico's Quito embassy.
ABC/Wires
