Who is Jorge Glas, the former vice president of Ecuador and bishop of Rafael Correa, who caused the crisis with Mexico to explode and was locked up in a maximum security prison

Jorge Glas, the former vice president of Ecuador arrested on Friday night during a controversial police operation that raided the Mexican embassy in Quito, where he was holding political asylum, has been transferred to a maximum security prison in Bel amidst a diplomatic storm. For him, prison is nothing newwho was able to be one of the strong men of Rafael Correa’s government between 2007 and 2017. On the contrary: he is once again detained, like most of the more It’s been six years since he left office.

Involved in convictions and corruption charges, Glas reports being the victim of a political persecution and appeals to a term very familiar to any Argentine: talk about ‘right’one of former President and former Vice President Cristina Kirchner’s favorite words to defend against complaints of mismanagement in her two administrations.

Just because it’s not the first time Glas has been arrested doesn’t mean this episode is the same as previous ones. And whatThis latest arrest led Mexico to sever diplomatic relations with Ecuadorafter the government of President Daniel Noboa stormed into the Mexican embassy in Quito to capture the Correísta leader, a few hours after the administration of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador granted him the political asylum he had requested .

Glas’ arrest, which several former presidents of the region denounce as a kidnapping more linked to the times of the dictatorship, takes place at a moment of maximum tension and a few hours after the expulsion by the Ecuadorian government of the Mexican ambassador, Raquel Serur.

The diplomat was expelled from the country due to López Obrador’s statements in which he linked the murder of candidate Fernando Villavicencio with the electoral victory of Noboa, who won in the run-off over the current candidate Luisa González.

“There were elections in Ecuador; The candidate of the progressive forces was ahead by about 10 points. So, a candidate who speaks badly of the candidate who is at the top is assassinated and the candidate who was at the top falls and the candidate who was second gets up,” the Mexican president said. harassment by the former councillor

López Obrador was referring to presidential candidate Luisa González, from the Citizens Revolution party of former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa (2007-2017). “You remain a suspect after this murder, you continue to campaign in, I believe, very difficult circumstances,” the Mexican president said.

The reaction was almost immediate. Noboa ordered his chancellor Gabriela Sommerfeld to expel her. And he said that Mexican Ambassador Raquel Serur Smeke had 72 hours to leave the country for offending the Ecuadorian state and Ecuadorians. The rest is known history.

Glas is currently accused of alleged embezzlement (misappropriation of public funds) in the ‘Reconstruction’ case of the coastal province of Manabí, the most affected by the strong earthquake that occurred in 2016, for which a judge had ordered his arrest and incarceration. after staying at the Mexican embassy.

An old friendship with Rafael Correa

Glas, 54, is an electrical engineer and has formed a friendship with Correa since his youth as part of a group of boy scouts in the port city of Guayaquil, where the two are from.

He was therefore part of the Correa government from the beginning, as president of the Solidarity Fund (2007-2009), then as minister of Telecommunications and the Information Society (2009-2010) and minister of the coordinators of strategic sectors (2010- 2012). ). ).

Then, together with Correa, he formed the electoral pair of candidates for president and vice president of the political formation in power Alianza País for the 2013 elections, and after the electoral victory he completed four years of mandate (2013-2017) and then repeated the his victory with Lenin and Moreno in 2017.

However, Moreno soon removed Glas from all his duties when they began to do so Complaints and signs of corruption are accumulating against him, and in September In 2017, the vice president entered pretrial detention and was removed from office.

Why he was arrested: three convictions, two still valid

The judicial trials continued their course in the following years while he remained in prison and accumulated up to three convictions, although one of these was later overturned.

He was first sentenced in late 2017 to six years in prison illicit association in the Odebrecht caseand then in 2020 to eight years in prison for corruption in the “Corruption” case.the Alianza País irregular financing conspiracy in which Correa was also convicted and disqualified, who like Glas claims to be a victim of “legality” and in his case he has refugee status from Belgium.

In In 2021 he was also sentenced to another eight years in prison for misappropriation on his part “Single” case.on the contract award conditions for this oil block.

Released with caution and reported by a counselor

During his stay in prison he always tried to find a way to free himself by claiming a delicate health condition and danger to his lifeas the prison crisis in Ecuador worsened, with frequent riots and massacres between rival criminal gangs that internally control the prisons.

He thus managed to temporarily escape from prison for 40 days in April 2022, thanks to a controversial judicial resolution that was later annulled.

At the end of the same year another judicial decision ordered him again precautionary release until the judge decided whether to grant him the benefit of bail, after managing to combine the two sentences for the cases ‘Tantenni’ and Odebrecht and having served for almost eight years of deprivation of liberty.

However, justice denied him this benefit, so he had to return to prison to serve his sentence.

Another court ruling restored his political rights to run in the 2023 special elections, and in that context Glas was chosen in the first instance as Correismo’s presidential candidate for those elections, but he rejected the candidacy due to the possibility that the resolution that allowed his request was rescinded.

At the end of 2023, he was involved in another complaint for alleged intimidation by Soledad Padilla, a former councilor who had assisted him during his stay in prison and who, according to the complainant, suffered harassment from Glas when he would not have seen his interest reciprocated in formalizing a relationship and in discovering that he had a romantic relationship with a deputy of the Correismo parliamentary group.

Instead, Glas countersued Padilla for alleged extortion by stating that he allegedly asked to receive $350,000 in exchange for not releasing recordings of some of their conversations that eventually came to light.

Now, Correa’s former vice president is once again at the center of controversy, this time after the police operation ordered by the Noboa government to arrest him despite having political asylum in the Mexican embassy in Quito, triggering an almost diplomatic crisis.