Quito, March 5. Ecuadorian justice ordered this Sunday the periodic presentation of former President Lenín Moreno (2017-2021) before the National Court of Justice, as part of the investigations in the Sinohydro case, which revolves around alleged bribes received for the construction of the Coca-Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant.
Judge Adrian Rojas ordered the presentation every 15 days to the secretariat of the National Court of Justice of Ecuador for Moreno, as well as his wife Rocío and Xavier M.
The rest of the defendants must appear every eight days in the same establishment, in addition to weighing them with the prohibition to leave the territory and to use surveillance devices, with the exception of Wu Y. for whom preventive detention has been ordered.
The state attorney general’s office said it was prosecuting 37 people, including Moreno, for “their alleged participation in the crime of corruption: they allegedly received approximately $76 million – between 2009 and 2018 in bribes of the Sinohydro company, builder of the Coca-Codo Sinclair hydroelectric project”.
Last Friday, Ecuador’s attorney general, Diana Salazar, called for Moreno’s house arrest when filing her accusation in the Sinohydro case.
During the hearing to present the corruption charge, Salazar said preventive detention was necessary for the 37 defendants in the case, but the Constitution prohibits this measure for those over 65, as it is. de Moreno, his wife and 12 other people investigated, for whom he asked for house arrest.
The prosecutor also asked Judge Rojas, of the National Court of Justice, to withhold and freeze the accounts of all the defendants, including those residing abroad, as is the case of Moreno, who works as Commissioner of the Organization of American States on Disabilities. Business.
ALLEGED BRIBERY
Salazar argued that China’s state-owned Sinohydro paid bribes of around $76 million, which would have made work on Ecuador’s largest hydroelectric plant more expensive from 1,979 million to $2,245 million.
In the case of the former president and his family, he estimated the alleged illicit money received at $660,000, of which $220,000 would correspond to Moreno and his wife in the form of a house and furniture.
The prosecutor awarded the remaining $440,000 to Moreno’s brothers, Edwin ($350,000) and Guillermo ($10,000), his daughter Irina ($50,000), his sisters-in-law Jacqueline ($10,000) and Martha ( $15,000), and her mother-in-law Aída Graciela ($5,000).
According to the thesis defended by Salazar, most of the alleged bribes would have been for Conto Patiño, a friend of former President Moreno, and his family, worth 44 million dollars.
The prosecutor’s indictment also includes two Coca executives Codo Sinclair and former Chinese ambassador to Ecuador Cai Runguo, who was Sinohydro’s legal representative at the time.
The Sinohydro affair broke in 2019, when the journalistic portal La Fuente published an investigation implicating one of Moreno’s brothers with alleged accounts in tax havens and a luxury property in Alicante (Spain), in an apparent triangulation of an opaque society.
In this journalistic report, a series of links and alleged irregularities were revealed that linked Moreno to the “offshore” company INA Investment, which led to an initial investigation by the prosecutor’s office into alleged bribes received when he held the vice-presidency of Ecuador, during the presidential mandate by Rafael Correa (2007-2017).
However, the ex-governor categorically denied this complaint and suggested that it was due to a political strategy of Correa, his main detractor, who lives in Belgium and who was convicted by the Ecuadorian justice for corruption in another case. of corruption.
With a capacity of 1,500 megawatts, the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant is located on the Coca River, between the Amazonian provinces of Napo and Sucumbíos, and its infrastructure is in question due to the appearance of cracks in its structure, even before its commissioning. .operation in 2016. EFE
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