The Justice of Ecuador This Wednesday he sentenced ten years in prison a Danilo Carrerabrother-in-law of the former Ecuadorian president Guillermo Lassoafter declaring him guilty of the crime of organized crimein a plot of corruption y influence peddling.
The Prosecutor’s Office reported the magistrates’ definition of the Encounter casewhich reaches other actors and which unleashed, at the beginning of 2023, a serious political crisis after audios of the accused referring to these illegal operations became known.
Carrera, director of the Bank of Guayaquil and former president of the Ecuadorian Olympic Committee (COE), must pay a comprehensive repair of more than USD 680.000 along with the penalty, which, in any case, may appeal. Likewise, if he remains firm, he would not spend time behind bars but would serve his sentence at home, since Ecuadorian law guarantees this benefit in people over 65 years old.
The Encuentro Case investigates a corruption plot within the Lasso Executive, in which those involved “intended to obtain undue economic benefits using his close position with politics and, thus, interfere in public institutions such as the National Electricity Corporation (CNEL), the Public Enterprise Coordinating Company (EMCO), BanEcuador (public banking) and the National Customs Service.” From there, they began “the contract award and the irregular entry of people into state companieswith the objective of obtaining economic returns,” the accusation insists.
Eight people were identified in this plot: Carrera, Hernan Luqueformer EMCO holder; Antonio Icanzaformer manager of CNEL; Karen Cornejo, Ericka Farías, Leonardo Cortázar, Ruben Cherres and the businessman Gabriel Naim Massuh.
Icanza was also sentenced this Wednesday to nine years and four months in prisonwhile Luque is waiting for a extradition request from Argentina. The rest have an order preventive detentionwith the exception of Cherrés, who was killed in March 2023while he was in hiding.
“The defendants They acted with full knowledge of the execution of the illegal act and each one played a specific role”, either as leader or of collaboratorprosecutors in the case said during a hearing in late September.
Carrera claims to be innocent and says he is a victim of a defamation operation who seeks to harm Lasso. He even described the case as a “fictional media novel”. In that same sense, the former President defended the businessman and considered him a person of integrity, whom he has known for at least 60 years.
“He is a person whom I esteem, appreciate and value very much… he is an honorable, blameless man,” he said.
Despite his defense, the Encuentro case was one of the processes that led to a political trial against him in April 2023. The Constitutional Court rejected the request but did process another request in Parliament regarding the case of an alleged embezzlement of public funds in contracts of the state-owned Ecuadorian Oil Fleet (Flopec).
The then President managed to evade this instance by invoking the constitutional appeal of “crossed death”which implied the dissolution of the Legislature and the early calling of elections that ended his mandate and began the current administration, Daniel Noboa.
(With information from AP and EFE)
