Ecuador’s ex-president and Chinese ambassador seek to avoid jail over belt and road dam

Former Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno and a former Chinese ambassador to Quito asked the country’s highest court on Thursday to spare them the five-year sentences handed down last week over a US$76 million bribery scheme.

Moreno was convicted of bribery by a three-judge panel of the National Court of Justice over contracts for Ecuador’s largest hydroelectric project secured by a Chinese state contractor.

The judges found unanimously that he had used his position as vice-president, held from 2007 to 2013 before he won the presidency in 2017, to help secure financing for the Coca Codo Sinclair plant, built by Sinohydro, a unit of Chinese state group PowerChina.

But the former president has not been detained and remains in Ecuador, and if the conviction is upheld, he would serve his term at home rather than in prison, because he is paraplegic.

The judges will take up his request on September 7 and, if it is granted, his prison term would be suspended and replaced with conditions such as periodic reporting.

“I have not received a single cent from Sinohydro, so please do not come and tell me that I am an accused man,” Moreno told reporters after the ruling was read out.