Guayaquil, Thursday, October 26, 2023. The former vice president of the Republic Jorge Glas offered a press conference in which he indicated that he is being investigated for an alleged murder that occurred in 2019. Photos: Jimmy Negrete/ API Photo: API
The Foreign Ministry of Ecuador has reported, on the afternoon of Saturday, January 27, that “Given the formal request of this Foreign Ministry, the Embassy of the United Mexican States has communicated that Ecuadorian citizen Jorge Glas remains, as a “guest”at the headquarters of said diplomatic representation».
The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility of Ecuador, Gabriela Sommereld, had stated on Friday, in statements to the Ecuavisa channel, that she will not grant permission for Glas, who has been convicted twice for corruption and has another criminal case underway. , travel to Mexico without being captured if that country grants you asylum.
“The president (Daniel Noboa) already expressed it: the safe conduct will not be delivered”Sommerfeld said in statements to the Ecuavisa channel.
Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena has anticipated that a diplomatic delegation from Mexico will arrive in Quito in the coming days to study the case.
Glas, who defends his innocence and denounces political persecution against him, has been under a preventive detention order since the beginning of January in the case of the reconstruction of Manabí after the 2016 earthquake, where he has been charged with an alleged crime of embezzlement ( embezzlement of public funds).
Glas, who was part vice president of the governments of Rafael Correa (2007-2017) and Lenín Moreno (2017-2021), entered the Mexican Embassy in Quito on December 17 – although at that time no order weighed on him. prison, according to the Prosecutor’s Office – and three days later he requested diplomatic asylum in the Aztec country.
This former vice president spent five years and four months in prison after being sentenced to eight years for bribery in the ‘Bribery’ case, where Correa was also disqualified and convicted, and six years for illicit association related to the construction company bribery scandal. Brazilian Odebrecht.
Glas has said he will seek to reverse that case after Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court annulled evidence of Odebrecht’s computer system.
The asylum request presented by Glas is reminiscent of the case of the former Correísta minister María de los Ángeles Duarte, also convicted in the ‘Bribery’ case, who for nearly two and a half years was housed with her minor son in the residence of the ambassador of Argentina waiting for the Argentine Government to resolve his asylum request.
At the end of 2022, the Government of the then Peronist President Alberto Fernández granted her asylum, but the Executive of the conservative Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso denied her safe passage, so the former minister left Ecuador without the local authorities noticing until she arrived in Venezuela. .
This generated strong diplomatic tension between Argentina and Ecuador, which mutually expelled their ambassadors and were unable to appoint new heads of mission until four months later. EFE