The Government of Ecuador requested permission to Mexico to enter its embassy in Quito and arrest Jorge Glasvice president during the presidential term of Rafael Correa (2007-2017), who has been in that diplomatic headquarters since last December awaiting a response to the requested asylum.
In the document, the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry asks the Mexican ambassador, Raquel Serur, for her consent “so that the forces of order (Police), who depend on the Ministry of the Interior, enter the premises of the (diplomatic) mission and “Comply with the capture of Mr. Jorge David Glas Espinen, ordered by the National Court of Justice of Ecuador.”
The Ecuadorian Government has warned Mexico that If he is granted asylum, “it would make void all the commitments made in international instruments such as the United Nations Convention against Corruption”as confirmed to EFE by sources from the Foreign Ministry.
In relation to the information circulating on social networks, we confirm that the Foreign Ministry, as a diplomatic channel, has requested the Mexican Embassy’s consent so that law enforcement agencies can comply with the provision of the National Court of Justice.
— Chancellery of Ecuador 🇪🇨 (@CancilleriaEc) March 1, 2024
the same Ministry of Foreign Affairs He stated that, to date, he has not received a response from the Mexico’s embassy.
Glas entered the Mexican Embassy in Quito in December 2023. Once there, the former vice president requested political asylum. However, so far there has been no statement from the government of Mexico.
Ecuador says it will not give safe passage
Before making this request, The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador, Gabriela Sommerfeld, had already anticipated weeks before that, if Mexico granted him asylum, the Government of Daniel Noboa would not grant safe passage for Glas to leave the country without being detained..
Glas, who was released at the end of 2022 after serving five years in prison for two convictions for bribery and illicit association of eight and six years in prison, respectively, is being prosecuted for alleged embezzlement (embezzlement) in the ‘Reconstruction’ case of the coastal province of Manabí after the 2016 earthquake.
In mid-December 2023, Glas, who considers himself innocent and a persecuted political victim of ‘lawfare’, arrived at the Mexican Embassy in Quito, when there was still no arrest warrant against him.
At the beginning of January, a judge ruled that he be placed in provisional prison for the Manabí reconstruction case.
The Prosecutor’s Office investigation determined that there would be an abuse of public money for the benefit of third parties, natural and legal, who were contractors and inspectors of the signed contracts.
Glas 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 bribery scandal of the Brazilian construction company. Odebrecht.
The former vice president, who held the position during part of Correa’s mandate and the first months of Lenín Moreno’s mandate (2017-2021), has said that he will seek to reverse that case after the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil annulled the tests of the computer system of Odebrecht.
The Duarte case
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 Government of that country to resolve his asylum request.
At the end of 2022, the Government of then Peronist President Alberto Fernández granted her asylum, but the Executive of 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.
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