ECUADOR: Ex-President Finds Refuge from Corruption Charges

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kintto Lucas

QUITO, Jul 30 2003 (IPS) - The Dominican Republic has granted former Ecuadorian president Gustavo Noboa asylum, adding yet another link to the long chain of politicians who have opted to leave the country to avoid trial on corruption charges.

The Dominican Republic granted former Ecuadorian president Gustavo Noboa asylum Wednesday, adding another link to the long chain of politicians who have opted to leave the country to avoid trial on corruption charges.

Noboa, who served as president from January 2000 to January 2003, serving out the term of ousted president Jamil Mahuad, had requested political asylum at the Dominican embassy in Quito on Monday, saying he is a victim of “unrelenting” persecution from the right-leaning Social-Christian Party (PSC).

The leader of the opposition PSC, former president León Febres Cordero (1984-1988), declared in May that he would pursue Noboa “like a hungry dog.”

Six months after the Noboa administration ended, succeeded by Lucio Gutiérrez, the now legislative deputy Febres Cordero accused the former president of injury to the state totalling 9.0 billion dollars, committed during the country’s foreign debt restructuring process in July 2000.

“Insecurity in Ecuador is so dramatic… that I find it necessary to solicit diplomatic political asylum, as stipulated in the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights,” Noboa said in a letter sent to Dominican Republic officials in Ecuador.

On May 21, the first time that Febres Cordero had appeared in Congress since the newly elected lawmakers were sworn in Jan. 5, he accused Noboa, a social democrat, of leading “a disastrous renegotiation of the external debt.”

The denunciation was picked up by government prosecutor Mariana Yépez, who asked the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Armando Bermeo, to issue an order for the preventative detention of Noboa and several of his top advisers.

Legal proceedings began even though the arrest order was rejected due to lack of evidence. Nor did the Supreme Court issue an order banning Noboa from leaving the country.

But Ecuador’s migration authorities announced Sunday that Noboa could not travel abroad because of a different order, unrelated to the current case, involving the former president’s alleged role in the collapse of two banks.

Noboa’s asylum request, which the Dominican Republic accepted Wednesday, seems to have become the norm in the past decade for former Ecuadorian presidents and other officials who seek to avoid appearing in court to account for their actions.

In October 1995, then-vice-president Alberto Dahik, who served under Sixto Durán Ballén (1992-1996) left the country to duck charges of embezzling state funds, a case also initiated by Febres Cordero, who at the time was mayor of Ecuador’s second city, Guayaquil.

Dahik had belonged to the PSC and had served as Febres Cordero’s chief of staff, but when he left the party a volley of mutual accusations ensued between the two men.

Then, Abdalá Bucaram, elected president in 1996, fled to Panama in February 1997 after Congress removed him from office for motives of incompetence – he was known as “the crazy one” – and amidst growing popular protests.

In May 1997, the Supreme Court upheld an order for Bucaram’s arrest, though he had already left the country. The former president faces five lawsuits for illicit enrichment and embezzlement.

Panama has become the home for several of the Bucaram administration’s officials, including former chief of staff César Verduga, accused of misappropriation of state funds.

Fabián Alarcón, who Congress named as Bucaram’s replacement, had better luck, as he was acquitted after being imprisoned on charges of using congressional funds for paycheques for 1,200 people who had not actually hold jobs.

Mahuad, ousted from the presidency on Jan. 21, 2000, amidst an indigenous movement uprising supported by military officers, is yet another former leader who left Ecuador when corruption charges were formulated against him.

Justice authorities had ordered his arrest in June 2000 for his alleged role in the financial damages caused thousands of savers by the bank freeze executed in March 1999.

But by then Mahuad had left for the United States, where he now gives conferences and is a professor at Harvard University.

Meanwhile, Noboa has his defenders. Attorney Joffre Campaña, one of his former advisers, says “the aim of these proceedings is to send him to a regular prison, a penitentiary full of common criminals where the former president’s life would be in danger.”

Noboa had stated just last week that he would remain in Ecuador and face the legal charges against him.

President Lucio Gutiérrez’s press secretary Marcelo Cevallos says, “there is no political persecution” against the former president and “no reason he should be granted asylum,” as the Dominican Republic did Wednesday.

But the Gutiérrez administration made it clear it would respect the decision taken by any country with respect to asylum requests. Noboa had also solicited asylum in El Salvador, but was refused. Wednesday, speaking from the residence of the Dominican Republic’s ambassador in Quito, Noboa said, “Febres Cordero is the most immoral man there is in Ecuador.”

Former president Bucaram said from his home in exile in Panama that Noboa is not a victim of political persecution but rather “a thief who is being pursued by another thief, because this is a problem of poor distribution among the mafias.”

“The families of Noboa, Febres Cordero and the social-Christian mafias have plundered the country, and now Febres Cordero is using the judicial mafia to put down a political rival,” said Bucaram.

At least 15 top officials of various administrations and former bank executives have fled Ecuadorian justice in the past eight years.

The Berlin-based watchdog Transparency International has ranked Ecuador the second most corrupt country in Latin America, after Paraguay.

And a government report from 2000 indicated that corruption costs this impoverished country more than 2.0 billion dollars a year.