QUITO.- A judge of Ecuador revoked this Thursday the conditional freedom that allowed the former vice president Jorge Glas out of prison in 2022 and ordered his capture and return to the jail.
Glas, who is in the Mexican embassy in Quito as a “guest” and awaiting a response to his request for political asylum, served 60% of an accumulated sentence of eight years in prison for two cases of corruption.
According to his lawyers, serving that period in prison entitled the former vice president to benefit from a freedom resource that is granted to those who have served 40% of their sentence, among other requirements.
But during a hearing that began on Wednesday and was resumed this Thursday, the prison guarantees judge, Melissa Muñoz, determined that the former vice president did not comply with one of the legal requirements by registering a score of 2.8 out of 10 in the technical report issued by the social rehabilitation authority.
After the refusal, the judge revoked the provisional freedom granted to him in November 2022 by Judge Emerson Curipallo, prosecuted in the case of drug trafficking infiltration in the judicial system known as “Metastásis”, and ordered his location and capture.
According to the ruling, Glas must serve the rest of the sentence in prison, that is, two years and 11 months.
Glas’s lawyer, Edison Loaiza, announced that his client “has given up appearing voluntarily” because “his life and integrity are at risk” in prison, where he has suffered threats and extortion, he said.
Loaiza also announced to the press that he will appeal Judge Muñoz’s decision.
Glas, who served as vice president between 2013 and 2017, was sentenced to six years in prison for illicit association in the Odebrecht case and eight years for bribery in a bribery scheme in the contracting of public works. This sentence was unified in January 2023, meaning that he had to serve the longest sentence.
The attorney general, Diana Salazar, pointed out Glas, ensuring that, according to investigations, his release from prison was due to a payment from drug trafficker Leandro Norero, alias “El Patrón”, for $250,000 to Judge Curipallo.
In another case, the prosecutor’s office is prosecuting the former second president for alleged embezzlement in a reconstruction work due to the April 2016 earthquake, for which a hearing to formulate charges was set for January 5, 2024, along with two other former officials.
Source: With information from AP
