WASHINGTON DC / QUITO, Ecuador – The former president of Ecuador Rafael Correa (2007-2017) responded this Wednesday that “there is no right” to the ban on entry to the United States for him and his immediate family, announced by the government of that country. The determination also applies to its former vice president Jorge Glas, currently in prison.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement that Correa and Glas “are not eligible to enter the United States due to their involvement in significant acts of corruption during their tenure.”
According to President Joe Biden’s government, the former Ecuadorian president and his “number two” abused their public positions “by accepting bribes in exchange for granting favorable government contracts.”
Prohibition also for family members
The United States Embassy in Ecuador stated in a subsequent statement that the ban on entry into its territory imposed on Correa and Glas also extends to their closest relatives.
In the case of Correa, the ban also covers his wife of Belgian nationality, Anne Malherbe, and his adult children Sofía, Anne Dominique and Rafael.
For Glas, the restriction will also apply to his wife, Cinthia Díaz, and their son, Jorge Glas Díaz.
Correa, who governed from 2007 to 2017 as one of the leaders of the Latin American left, has resided since the end of his mandate in Belgium, which granted him political asylum in 2022, before the National Court of Justice of Ecuador requested his extradition.
For his part, Glas, who was one of the strong men of the Correa government, was arrested on April 5 in the assault by Ecuadorian security forces on the Mexican Embassy in Quito, where he had arrived in December 2023. to request diplomatic asylum, a condition that the Mexican government granted him hours before his arrest.
López Obrador criticized the “authoritarian and vile” way in which the Ecuadorian forces “raided the diplomatic headquarters” to take away former vice president Jorge Glas (2013-2017), who had been in custody since December.
Firm sentences
Glas was then subject to an arrest warrant and pre-trial detention in the case of the reconstruction works after the strong earthquake of 2016, where he is accused of alleged embezzlement (embezzlement of public funds).
The former vice president, who like Correa declares himself a victim of “lawfare” and political persecution, also had to finish serving an eight-year prison sentence for two corruption convictions imposed in 2017 for illicit association in the framework of the Odebrecht case and in 2020 for bribery in the Bribery case.
Glas was initially imprisoned in 2017 and was released from prison in 2022 thanks to a controversial judicial resolution by a judge who last week was convicted of prevarication in the processing of the resolution that allowed the former vice president to regain freedom.
“It was chilling, they were moments of terror,” said a journalist about the minutes of terror they experienced on the television set during the assault by a group of hooded armed men in the middle of the live program. To see more from Telemundo, visit
Correa’s messages
Through a message on social networks, Correa once again claimed his innocence in the face of the sentence of eight years in prison and political disqualification that was imposed on him in 2020 for bribery in the “Bribes 2012-2016” case, where both he and Several of his collaborators were convicted of irregular financing of Alianza País, the official political movement at that time.
“Human evil… they ignore the fact that no one in the world has accepted the sentence for ‘psychic influence’ and that five countries have given political asylum to those involved in the Bribery Case. They even include my family. There is no right!” expressed Correa, who always questions that in the sentence where he was sentenced he was attributed “psychic influence” on the others involved.
In another subsequent message, Correa launched several “hypotheses of this new idiocy made by the gringos,” among which he mentioned a possible revenge “for what happened to (Julian Assange),” founder of WikiLeaks to whom Ecuador gave asylum in its embassy in London. while he was required by the American Justice.
The former president also commented that it could be “a distraction to divert attention from the disaster of the (Daniel) Noboa government, at its worst” with a worsening of scheduled blackouts of up to ten hours a day due to the serious energy crisis that affects the country.
Likewise, he mentioned that this ban may be due to a possible “involvement (of the United States) in the Ecuadorian electoral campaign” for the 2025 elections, where its candidate Luisa González is one of the main favorites in the polls carried out so far, along with the President Noboa.
The protagonist of the largest leak of classified documents in history was holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy for 7 years and imprisoned in London for another 5 years. To see more from Telemundo, visit
