Courtroom order freezes financial institution accounts of former President Rafael Correa and 19 others as a part of a corruption investigation.
Ecuador’s Lawyer Common’s Workplace has stated that via an area courtroom it had frozen the financial institution accounts of many enterprise leaders and former authorities officers, together with former President Rafael Correa and members of his administration, who have been sentenced final 12 months for breaking marketing campaign finance legal guidelines.
Correa and 19 others, together with his former vp who’s in jail for an additional corruption case, have been accused of accepting $7.5m in bribes in alternate for public contracts to finance his celebration’s electoral campaigns between 2012 and 2016.
The previous president, who was in workplace from 2007 to 2017, was sentenced to eight years in jail by an Ecuadorian choose in 2020 however has lived in Belgium since leaving workplace 4 years in the past, evading justice in his dwelling nation.
Along with jail time, these sentenced have been ordered to pay a complete of $14.7m in reparations to the federal government, with completely different quantities in accordance with every particular person’s sentence.
To this point simply three of the 20 convicted within the case, all businessmen, have paid their debt, in accordance with the Lawyer Common’s Workplace which made the announcement on Friday.
In a press release, the workplace additionally stated that, after the account seizures, it will “request the identical courtroom order the seizure of property registered within the identify of the convicted individuals”.
Correa, 58, additionally has a pending arrest warrant for the alleged kidnapping of a political opponent and is banned from collaborating in politics for 25 years.
His attorneys couldn’t instantly be reached for remark.
The previous chief has denied the accusations, saying they’re a political assault by former President Lenin Moreno, who Correa initially backed when Moreno was elected in 2017.
In August 2020 the Lawyer Common’s Workplace established the Asset Restoration Unit, with the aim of facilitating justice in corruption circumstances involving former public officers.