A former president of Ecuador has been sentenced to 5 years in prison after being discovered guilty of taking bribes.
Lenín Moreno insisted he had not taken money from a Chinese firm which secured a contract to construct a hydroelectric plant in the Latin American nation.
The 73-year-old will serve his sentence under home arrest due to his age and incapacity, and has already indicated his intention to appeal against the verdict after a court in the capital, Quito, discovered him and 19 others guilty of corruption.
Moreno, who was president between 2017 and 2021, is the third former Ecuadorian chief to be sentenced for corruption.
Prosecutors alleged that that Sinohydro, which is owned by the Chinese state, paid a complete of $76.1m (£56.2m) through shell firms to people concerned in the deal to secure the construction of the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric dam.
Among those handed prison sentences were Moreno’s spouse, daughter and brother, as properly as former plant managers, Sinohydro representatives and a Chinese ambassador to Ecuador.
While Moreno himself was alleged to have obtained very little from the scheme, prosecutors said relations obtained tens of 1000’s of {dollars}.
Those convicted of bribery will have to repay 3 times what they were given, while Moreno was barred from public workplace.
He denied involvement in the alleged bribery scheme and instead blamed another former president, Rafael Correa, under whom he served as vice-president and who was sentenced to eight years in prison in a separate bribery case in 2020.
Moreno argued that Correa had signed off on the Coca Codo Sinclair project, and that he had launched an investigation into points with the construction when he had assumed the presidency.
The Ecuadorian authorities launched legal proceedings against Sinohydro in 2021 due to cracks showing in the dam and other technical failures. It reached a $400m settlement with the firm’s proprietor earlier this yr.
The BBC has approached Sinohydro and the Chinese embassy in Ecuador for remark.
Source hyperlink
