Faced with a spate of corruption cases during the correat, the public reacts by demanding that the corrupt be paid the bribe money. So far this has not been achieved; Besides, bribes are only the tip of the iceberg of lost money. Let’s look at two examples.

The case of corruption structure in the sale of crude oil set in 2010 with Nilsen Arias at the helm. The arias remained until the end of the correat.

A court in New York continues to prosecute Arias for money laundering. Arias pleaded guilty and is cooperating. He admitted that he received a bribe of 22 million dollars. On April 20, a judge fined him $13.5 million (for money laundering, not bribery). The amount recovered from the fine remains in the US and will not be delivered to Petroecuador because the court considers it the first link in the chain of corruption.

Odebrecht says it warned Petroecuador in 2014 about the ground conditions at the Cuenca terminal

Arias must be sung clearly; Will it be known which of their superiors benefited? The bribe is much more than $22 million. The structure of corruption in the sale of crude oil consisted of a triangular relationship with Asian state oil companies and four merchants of oil companies Representative a trader He admitted to paying at least $70 million in bribes to local officials.

The US Justice Department has provided evidence to the prosecution, so it is expected that they will sue and obtain punishment for those involved. But judging by what happened with Jorge Glas and others, the culprits do not return the money and go free.

But even if that money were returned, the bribe would amount to a few hundred million dollars at most, and in exchange for the bribe, the officials allowed the intermediaries to damage Petroecuador by about 5,000 million dollars, claims the president of the Control Commission.

In exchange for a few hundred thousand bribes, the state lost hundreds of millions…

The case of the construction of the Pascuales-Cuenca pipeline, contracted in 2013. Ecuador is asking Odebrecht for damages of 281 million dollars for the poor quality of the works, and Odebrecht is defending itself, saying that Petroecuador submitted incorrect studies. The studies were made by Caminosca.

Caminosca has produced public works studies for Celec, the Ministry of Transport, Flopec and the Municipality of Quito for the metro, among others. In 2012, it was bought by the Australian company Cardno, which retained the former owners as officials. In 2016, Cardno became aware of the abuse and hired Kroll to investigate three study contracts. Kroll found in the Toachi Pilatón contract at least $150,000 in payments to an official identified as “Glass”; at least $1.2 million in bribes were paid in Sopladora; same in Minas San Francisco. In 2017, the Miami Court of Arbitration requested that the officials return the money from the purchase of the company, and that the transaction be canceled. Cardno did not give Kroll’s information to the national authorities, because those authorities included part of the bribe.

If Caminosca, true to his way of working, paid a bribe to be hired by the Pascuales-Cuenca studies, it goes without saying that the civil servants did not object to the quality of the studies. In exchange for a few hundred thousand bribes, the state lost hundreds of millions, and Cuenca did not benefit from a quality pipeline. (OR)