A court in Ecuador on Monday sentenced former vice president Jorge Glas, already serving a jail term, to another eight years in prison for misuse of public funds related to the awarding of an oil contract.
The court said it had found Glas guilty of the crime of embezzlement, along with two former energy ministers among the co-perpetrators. Glas is already serving a six-year term for having received millions of dollars in kickbacks as part of a corruption scandal.
He was convicted of receiving $13.5 million in bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, and has been imprisoned in Latacunga, south of Quito, since 2017.
He served as the vice president under leftist Rafael Correa between 2013 and 2017, and under president Lenin Moreno until he was stripped of his office in 2018.
In the current case, he is accused of having illicitly awarded an oil field contract in a scheme the prosecutor’s office said cost the country $28 million. Along with former boss Correa, Glas was also sentenced last year to another eight-year prison sentence for corruption.
Correa lives in exile in Belgium, claiming political persecution.
AFP
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