The Ecuadorian president will probably answer to justice for serious crimes such as organized crime, racketeering, bribery, embezzlement, illicit enrichment, influence peddling, procedural fraud and obstruction of justice
The government of Guillermo Lasso in Ecuador continues to wobble constantly. After losing the regional and local elections last February, now the president himself is involved in a skein of serious accusations that will surely bring him to justice. All this in the midst of almost zero popularity, especially after some elections in which correísmo clearly reemerged, a term to describe the political current very well directed by former president Rafael Correa.
The scenario draws the safe outlook for the 2025 presidential elections, if they are not held, given the limited margin of the president to maintain himself. A legislative commission, which investigated for three weeks an alleged case of corruption and links of people close to the president with drug-criminal groups, recommended submitting him to a political trial for attacking state security and bribery, violations provided for in the Ecuadorian Constitution.
There are 59 assembly members, mostly from the opposition, who approved the document called “The Great Godfather.” The initiative arose as a result of a report by the Ecuadorian Anti-Drug Police in 2021 that investigated an alleged relationship between the Albanian mafia and criminals linked to drug trafficking who were very close to Danilo Carrera, President Lasso’s brother-in-law. According to the legislators, the evidence found is part of the crime of “treason for attacking the security of the State.” However, after more than nine hours of debate, the legislature decided to modify it and eliminate the term “treason” to accuse him only of “attacking the security of the State.”
The president committed a crime under the modality of omission to protect his brother-in-law. According to the assembly members, he learned of the police report, later archived at the request of former Anti-Drug Director Geovanny Ponce. This was one of the generals that Lasso himself asked to dismiss after the femicide of the lawyer María Belén Bernal at the Police School, on September 11, 2022. However, he later retracted the decision and left him in office .
The commission also links Lasso to other serious crimes: organized crime, racketeering, bribery, embezzlement, illicit enrichment, influence peddling, procedural fraud, and obstruction of justice. Likewise, he must appear for appointing officials within public companies entangled in a skein of corruption. According to the investigations, those involved charged millionaire bribes in exchange for contracts and moved in the middle of influence peddling for the appointment of ministers and officials. An entire institutional scaffolding for corruption, according to the assembly member Viviana Veloz, who chairs the commission.
Request for impeachment
The assembly members ask to sit Lasso on the bench for the accused. For this, they must apply the two articles on concussion and embezzlement in force in the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code. The petition is being discussed in the Legislative Administration Council and, if approved, it would go to the Constitutional Court, an entity that has six days to issue an opinion of admissibility and decide whether or not to advance the elections. The different steps of the procedure could take a total of approximately a month and a half and in the end, 92 votes, out of 137 assembly members, are necessary to remove the president.
While Lasso denies the accusations and describes them as destabilization attempts, social organizations support his removal from power not only because of these crimes, but also because of state abandonment. Together with the problems of insecurity and political instability that dominate the concerns of the Executive, the macroeconomic and financial variables appear in this scenario. The country risk has remained high since the recent elections in February 2023 and has already exceeded 1,900 points, the Central Bank reported.
Guillermo Lasso vs. Alberto Fernandez
And, as if that were not enough, Guillermo Lasso is not doing well at the regional level either. An altercation with his Argentine counterpart, Alberto Fernández, aired on social networks, even led to the withdrawal of the respective ambassadors and makes it one of the most tense moments in the relationship between Argentina and Ecuador. The conflict began when María de los Ángeles Duarte Pesantes, a former minister of Rafael Correa convicted of alleged cases of corruption, fled from the Argentine diplomatic headquarters in Quito to Venezuela after a little more than two years as a refugee there. Lasso accuses Fernández of collaborating “in the escape of a fugitive person” and lying about the innocence of Ambassador Gabriel Fuks, expelled from the country after the incident.
In his opinion, the Casa Rosada bears full responsibility for the leak. Instead, Fernández considers that Lasso had an excessive reaction that hurts the bilateral relationship. The crisis escalated into an unusual discussion through messages on Twitter. Before, the Ecuadorian sent his peer a tough letter difficult to find in this type of communication between presidents. Relations between Ecuador and Argentina were at a fairly low point since the Government of Lenin Moreno, whom Fernández accused of his recognized betrayal of Rafael Correa after being his vice president. During the 2021 electoral campaign, Fernández openly supported the correísta candidate, Andrés Arauz.
COVER CREDIT
Guillermo Lasso staggers as he tries to walk a tightrope. / Latin Press.