A parliamentary commission accuses Lasso of threatening state security and calls for a political trial

Guillermo Lasso, in a meeting this Wednesday in Costa Rica. MAYELA LOPEZ (REUTERS)

The legislative commission that investigated for three weeks an alleged case of corruption and alleged ties of people close to the president of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, with narco-criminal groups recommended this Wednesday that the president be subjected to a political trial for attacking state security and bribery, crimes that are provided for in the Ecuadorian Constitution.

The group of assembly members, which is mostly from the opposition, approved with six votes in favor and one against, the document called

.

The initiative arose as a result of a report by the Ecuadorian Anti-Drug Police in 2021, called

, in which it investigated an alleged relationship between the Albanian Dritan Gjika, investigated for drug trafficking, and Rubén Cherres, a close friend of Danilo Carrera, brother-in-law of the President Lasso.

In the session that lasted more than nine hours, the legislators argued that the alleged irregularities they found are part of the crime of "treason for attacking the security of the State."

However, at the end of the interventions, there was a motion to modify it and they eliminated "treason" to accuse the president of "attacking state security."

This would have occurred under the modality of omission that President Lasso allegedly incurred "to protect his brother-in-law."

According to the assembly members, he learned of the police report that was archived at the request of the former Anti-Drug Director, Geovanny Ponce, one of the generals whose dismissal was requested by the president after the femicide of lawyer María Belén Bernal, at the police school on September 11. September 2022. The president, however, retracted that decision and left Ponce in office.

The commission also links Lasso to "crimes such as organized crime, racketeering, bribery, embezzlement, illicit enrichment, influence peddling, procedural fraud, and obstruction of justice," for having appointed officials who were part of the board of directors of public companies. that they woven an alleged network of corruption in which they collected millionaire bribes in exchange for contracts and in which there was also influence peddling for the appointment of ministers and officials.

"An institutional scaffolding for corruption was designed," said Assemblywoman Viviana Veloz, who chairs the commission.

The report was not unanimously approved, Assemblyman Gruber Zambrano, who presented a minority document -which was not discussed-, voted against the request for censure of the president and assured that the approved report "has already been done."

"I don't know where it comes from, what they want is to overthrow this government for partisan, personal and economic interests," he added.

The Minister of Government, Henry Cucalón, described the content of the report as "a tome, a document that has neither head nor tail, without any legal value."

The commission's report is not binding, and for the process against Lasso to continue, which can last around a month, the approval of various instances in the National Assembly is required and it must be sent to the Constitutional Court, which will verify whether meets the constitutional requirements and if the causes are well founded.

If he has the endorsement of the Court, he will return to the plenary session of the Assembly, which requires at least a vote in favor of 92 of 137 legislators to censure and remove the President of the Republic.

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