Suspicions behind the escape of the former Ecuadorian official: Rafael Correa, Cuban intelligence and the role of Argentine ambassador

The Government of Guillermo Lasso gave Gabriel Fuks three days to leave the headquarters of the Argentine Embassy in Ecuador after Foreign Minister Juan Carlos Holguín declared him persona non grata.

In addition, he was expelled due to a conflict that he inherited and found out about the end of Tuesday, after a day in which the diplomatic tension between Quito and Buenos Aires escalated until it reached the mutual expulsion of the ambassadors

Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero fired Ecuadorian ambassador Xavier Monge this Wednesday as a result of the escape and flight of María de los Angeles Duarte Pesantes.

The former Minister of Transport and Public Works of Rafael Correa, María Duarte Pesantes, sentenced by the justice in her country to eight years in prison for a corruption case in which Correísmo is also accused, was as a “guest” in The Argentine embassy in Ecuador.

She had been staying in one of the houses that are part of the 3-hectare diplomatic complex since August 2020.

At Correa's request to her friend Cristina Kirchner, President Alberto Fernández had granted the woman political asylum last year.

But Lasso would not give him a safe-conduct to leave Ecuador.

This weekend she escaped from the embassy and

This is a sensitive point for the weakened Lasso government, which at this time, according to consultations with high-ranking sources in Quito, points to a "plot."

Sources consulted in Ecuador assure that Duarte Pesantes was helped by 

They believe that Ambassador Laborde -a hyper K- was also involved and that there was a sort of armed operation similar to the escape of the Venezuelan opposition leader, Leopoldo López de Caracas. 

That escape took place in October 2020, in a secret operation.

The Spaniards took him out of the diplomatic headquarters in the Venezuelan capital, where he was as a "guest."

This generated an escalation.

Now they affirm in Quito that the Cubans and Venezuelans helped the correistas to get Duarte Pesantes out, who left a 12-year-old son in Guayaquil, who is Argentine and who gave the child nationality to expedite this type of procedure.

Laborde says that after receiving it for administrative reasons, he does not know the whereabouts of Duarte Pesantes.

And the Ecuadorian thesis is not confirmed, but the police of that country said that one of the hypotheses is that

Although it was stated that the woman escaped from the residence on Friday the 10th, Holguín now said that she received visits at the headquarters this weekend and before her escape.

That she was visited by a boyfriend and the father of her son, the Argentine.

Before the press in his country, Holguín was harsh with Fuks.

He said that there was in the "best of cases" negligence by Argentine diplomacy when it came to protecting Duarte and that "in the worst of cases there was complicity in his escape." But although the ambassadors were expelled, they did not

Ecuador cannot conclude how Duarte Pesantes escaped under the noses of the police.

They got angry with Fuks because he refused to provide the Embassy cameras to the police and the visit record, which increases suspicions of a possible participation in the event. 

Foreign Minister Holguín accused Fuks of having "violated good faith in the acts that seek the relationship between States, and above all mutual trust."

Holguín assured that the Police that guards the Argentine Embassy in Quito is only at the entrance gate and does not do any type of control to the vehicles that enter and leave there.

"Diplomatic cars cannot be searched," he added. 

Lasso has other problems.

This Wednesday he requested the dismissal of two police generals in the framework of a leak of new audios that are part of the opposition attack against him.

In other words, in addition to facing a request for impeachment in Congress, he has a conflict with the police forces.