The Ecuadorian Prosecutor's Office asks to prosecute former President Lenín Moreno for bribery

Former president Lenin Moreno, in a 2019 image. HENRY ROMERO (REUTERS)

Ecuador's Attorney General, Diana Salazar, reported this Wednesday that former President Lenín Moreno, his wife, a daughter, his two brothers, sisters-in-law and 30 other people would be involved in a transnational corruption structure.

Salazar asked the National Court of Justice to set a date and time for the hearing to formulate charges for the crime of bribery, for alleged bribes received in exchange for benefiting the construction of a hydroelectric plant.

The illegal actions would have occurred between 2009 and 2018 when Moreno held the position of vice president in the Government of Rafael Correa, Salazar said in a video that he published through official channels.

The case has been judicially named as

, which is the name of the Chinese company in charge of building the Coca Codo Sinclair dam, one of the last million-dollar works that Correa inaugurated in 2016 and that due to a series of technical failures has not worked to 100%.

Former President Moreno, who is in Paraguay, defended himself in a statement through his Twitter account in which he assured that he does not have and did not have "any responsibility in the contracting of the most emblematic work of the Citizen Revolution" and that he "It is surprising that among the defendants in the case there are not those who did have responsibility and competence in the different stages of the contractual process."

In April 2019, when Moreno was president of Ecuador and was consulted about the constitution of an

company in Panama by one of his brothers, mentioned by the Prosecutor's Office, he assured that he did it "at the request of the person who owed him the money." .

"Is that something forbidden?

No, because he is not a public official, he can have the

companies he wants, ”he said then.

In addition to Moreno, on the list are former Chinese ambassador Cai Runguo and representatives of the Chinese company Sinohydro, among others.

The amount of the alleged crime of bribery would be 76 million dollars, which corresponds to 4% of the initial value contracted for the work, which was 1,979 million dollars, although in the end the country paid 2,245 million for the dam.

"Those tens of millions of dollars in bribes had been delivered by Sinohydro and channeled through third parties using a false image of services and consultancies," said Salazar, who assured that thanks to criminal assistance from countries such as Panama, Belize, Switzerland China, the United States and Spain "helped to reliably demonstrate the configuration of the crime with scope outside the country," he added.

Moreno came to power sponsored by the political movement of his predecessor Rafael Correa and governed between 2017 and 2021. At the end of his presidential term, he notified the National Assembly of his departure to the United States for a period of three months, but to date he has not returned .

In 2021 he was nominated as commissioner of the Organization of American States (OAS) on disability issues, which is based in Paraguay, the country in which he is located.

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