The diplomatic crisis unleashed between Argentina and Ecuador does not seem to have found a ceiling, after a former minister convicted of corruption and refugee for more than two years in the Argentine diplomatic headquarters in Quito escaped to Venezuela in facts that have not been clarified.
After denouncing “inconsistencies” in the explanations provided by the Argentine ambassador Gabriel Fuks when he was summoned by Quito about this case, and for refusing to deliver videos from the embassy’s security cameras to clarify the escape of María de los Angeles Duarte, The government of President Guillermo Lasso declared Fuks persona “non grata”, who must leave the country in “a prudent time”.
Argentina’s response had the same tenor: it declared the Ecuadorian ambassador in Buenos Aires, Xavier Monge, persona “non grata.”
“There is no international norm that obliges the Argentine diplomatic authorities to exercise custody over Duarte,” claimed the Argentine Foreign Ministry.
The official of then President Rafael Correa is sentenced to eight years in prison for the crime of bribery, which is imprescriptible in Ecuador. Former head of the Transportation and Public Works portfolio, Duarte remained a refugee in the Argentine embassy in Quito since August 2020 in the company of her underage son of an Argentine father.
From Buenos Aires, he was offered asylum but the Ecuadorian government denied him a safe-conduct to leave in December.
Duarte then escaped from Quito, fled to Venezuela and appeared at the Argentine embassy in Caracas without giving any explanation as to how she got to the country or if her son was with her. Duarte is sentenced along with former President Correa (asylee in Belgium) and other former government officials for being part of a criminal structure that requested bribes for almost 7.6 million dollars from companies in exchange for contracts with the State, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Already from Caracas, Duarte “said he had no intention of traveling to Argentina in the short term,” although he “made inquiries about the documentation” that that country can offer him.
