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Ecuador’s ex-president Correa says jail term politically motivated

Wednesday, 08 April 2020 5:28 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 08 April 2020 5:29 AM ]

Ecuador’s former president Rafael Correa arrives to give a press conference at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, on October 9, 2019. (Photo by AFP)

Ecuador’s former president Rafael Correa has hit out at a hefty court sentence handed to him in absentia over alleged corruption, describing the verdict as political persecution.

A court in Ecuador on Tuesday sentenced Correa — who was the country’s president from 2007 to 2017 — to eight years in prison on corruption charges. The court also banned Correa from participating in politics for 25 years.

The prosecution had accused the former president of being the ringleader of a “criminal structure” and urged the court to give Correa the maximum sentence.

Correa, who now lives in the home country of his wife, Belgium, said his main concerns were now focused on his colleagues.

“Well, this is what they were looking for: using justice to achieve what they never could at the ballot box. I am fine. I am concerned about my colleagues,” Correa said on his Twitter account.

More than a dozen of Correa’s colleagues, including his vice president, who is in prison for another corruption conviction, have been accused of accepting millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for public contracts to finance his party’s electoral campaigns between 2012 and 2016.

Correa, one of the leftist leaders in Latin American politics, accused the judges of complicity with incumbent President Lenin Moreno, who Correa initially backed in 2017.

“I know the process and what the judges say is a LIE. They’ve proved absolutely NOTHING. Pure false testimony without evidence,” he further wrote on his Twitter account.

Correa’s defense team told Reuters it would take the case to a higher appellate court.

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